Microsoft wraps Skype for Business, analytics in new Office 365

Microsoft will offer a new premium Office 365 Enterprise Suite which will include Skype for Business, analytics and new security features, later this year.

Phil Sorgen, Microsoft worldwide partner group corporate vice president, says the new suite, dubbed E5 'will provide a significant new opportunity for partners to build new service offerings around real-time communication and analytics, and to reach new customers with important new security features.

Sorgen says E5 will encompass the core value of Office 365 productivity and collaboration capabilities as well as 'significant new innovations'.

Those 'innovations' include the addition cloud PBX and meeting broadcast via the new Skype for Business, which was previously sold as a standalone SKU.

E5 will also include new analytics features, such as Power BI Pro and Delve Organizational Analytics, and new advanced security features such as eDiscovery, Customer Lockbox, data loss protection and safe attachments.

"In this mobile-first, cloud-first world, those businesses that embrace technology to reinvent themselves and their industries will thrive, and those who embrace status quo risk extinction," Sorgen says.

"It's Microsoft's hundreds of thousands of global partners that will bring about this transformation, help our mutual customers through this change and forge the next industrial revolution.

Pricing for E5 was not announced.