Microsoft is changing how its Teams Rooms subscription plans work, introducing new Teams Rooms Pro and Teams Rooms Basic plans. These new plans replace the existing Teams Rooms Standard and Teams Rooms Premium, and they come with different price points and features, too. For starters, Teams Rooms Basic is now a free license for anyone who buys a Teams Rooms device.

Previously, with Teams Rooms Standard, the service would cost $15 per device per month, so having a free tier is certainly welcome. However, this free tier does come with some downsides, since some features that were previously supported are no longer available. For example, the Teams Basic Plan doesn't include Microsoft Intune management or Azure Active Directory Premium Plan 1. Plus, features like intelligent capture, which allowed Teams to capture a physical whiteboard and share it in a meeting, aren't available. Teams Rooms Basic delivers the basic Teams experience for Teams Rooms devices, but advanced management and other features are reserved for Teams Room Pro. Additionally, only up to 25 devices can be registered with a Teams Rooms Basic license under the same tenant.

Teams Rooms Pro, on the other hand, includes all the features you're probably already familiar with for Teams Rooms devices. That includes intelligent capture and features like joining a meeting across Teams clouds, but also specific meeting layouts like front row, together mode, the large gallery view, dual-screen support, and support for chat and Loop components. It also includes smart features like intelligent speaker identification for live transcripts. intelligent camera support for multiple video streams, and much more.

And of course, there are the security and management features, too, like support for Microsoft Endpoint Manager, remote settings configuration, device history and activate, and services like app updates and AI'-powered remediation, which were previously part of managed services in Teams Rooms Premium. You can find a full comparison of the Basic and Pro plans here.

Thankfully, Teams Rooms Pro is cheaper than Teams Rooms Premium was - you'll be paying $40 per device per month, whereas Teams Rooms Premium would cost you $50 per device per month. These changes in the pricing structure may force some users to upgrade and spend significantly more, but if you're already using Teams Rooms Premium, this should be good news for you. If you already have an existing license or an Enterprise Agreement, you can continue using those licenses until the next renewal period, at which point you'll need to choose one of the new licenses - they won't convert automatically.


Source: Microsoft