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Microsoft on Monday announced it had discounted the first 25 seats of Microsoft 365 (M365) Business Premium by 25% when purchased by new commercial customers through Nov. 30.

Citing "Small Business Saturday," an American Express-created promotional event that this year falls on Nov. 28, Microsoft said it was reducing Business Premium's per-user per-month fee from $20 to $15. The lower price will apply to a subscription's first year only, pegging the savings at $60 per user. If a customer maxed out the allowed seats, they would save a total of $1,500 during that year.

"Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes advanced security, designed to protect devices and data from proliferating cyberthreats — all while keeping IT complexity to a minimum, so business owners can keep their companies protected even without a dedicated IT staff," Kady Dundas, senior director for Microsoft 365, asserted in a Nov. 23 post to a company blog.

M365 Business Premium — which prior to April was labeled Microsoft 365 Business — is the top-tier software-as-a-subscription plan for small- and mid-sized companies. A maximum of 300 seats can be licensed under Business Premium —more than that and Microsoft steers customers to the pricier Enterprise-grade subscriptions.

Like most other M365 plans, Business Premium includes the locally-installed productivity applications that everyone associates with Office: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and so on. It also includes a full suite of services, ranging from Exchange Online to OneDrive and Teams, as well as the Intune manager and the Azure information protection platform. (The latter two are what separates Business Premium from the less expensive — $12.50 per user per month — Business Standard plan.)

The discount will be good through the end of November. More information on M365 Business Premium can be found here.