Microsoft reduces cloud storage limit for Microsoft 365 for Education customers

In addition to the announcement about retiring Office 365 A1 Plus free plan for education customers, Microsoft today announced that it is reducing the cloud storage limit for Microsoft 365 for Education customers.

All education customers with Microsoft 365 or Office 365 will receive 100TB of free pooled storage across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange, with an additional 50GB or 100GB of pooled storage per paid user for A3 and A5 subscriptions, respectively. This change will go live when customers renew their contract, but no sooner than August 1, 2024. Interested customers can purchase additional incremental storage if required.

Also, Office 365 A1 (no-cost subscription) plan customers will be limited to a maximum of 100GB of OneDrive storage per user within the school tenant’s 100TB of pooled storage. This change will be effective February 1, 2024.

Microsoft noted that most schools (99.96%) are well below their storage allotment. However, any mid-enrolment customer over that storage limit on August 1, 2024, Microsoft will offer additional storage at no cost through the customer’s current term.

In order to help customers with this change, Microsoft is releasing a set of free tools. Using these tools, customers can visualize current storage allocation and usage across OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange, and easily manage stored data and end-of-life files that are no longer needed.

Why is Microsoft making these changes to Microsoft 365 storage?

• Current storage plans are not sustainable from a cost perspective.
• Stored files no longer in use have an impact on carbon footprint with over half of all data stored by organizations not serving a useful purpose.
• Puts education institutions and their students at risk for a data breach.

IT Admins can go through this document to learn more about these storage changes.