Microsoft rebrands Windows 10 Enterprise as Windows 10 Enterprise E3; E5 edition coming soon

Microsoft today announced changes to its Windows 10 offerings for enterprises. Microsoft is renaming Windows 10 Enterprise to Windows 10 Enterprise E3. But the company also announced that later this summer it will come out with a new version of Windows 10 called Windows 10 Enterprise E5.

The move to establish a new top-of-the-line edition of Windows 10 will bring the major operating system from Microsoft in line with Office 365, which has E3 and E5 versions, along with ProPlus and E1 versions. Microsoft stopped selling the E4 version last week.

“To further simplify our offerings, we are standardizing packaging offers across Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise and the Enterprise Mobility + Security suite. Moving forward you will see E3 and E5 offerings for each of these products,” Julia White, general manager of cloud platform at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

In addition to the two flavors of Windows 10 Enterprise, Microsoft also offers Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Education, Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise, Windows 10 IoT Core, and Windows 10 IoT Core Pro. Altogether, Windows 10 is now on more than 350 million devices, with the anticipated Anniversary Update slated for release on August 2.

Also in today’s blog post, White spelled out changes to certain Microsoft enterprise cloud and mobility software products.

The Enterprise Cloud Suite is being replaced by a “Secure Productive Enterprise” license, which will include Microsoft Cloud App Security, Azure Information Protection, and Office 365 Advanced Security Management. This new offering is available in E3 and E5 versions. The E3 version will come with Windows 10 Enterprise E3, while the E5 version will contain Windows 10 Enterprise E5, and Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, an endpoint security tool for detecting breaches.

And the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) will now be referred to as Enterprise Mobility + Security, in both E3 and E5 versions, with the latter coming later in 2016. The E3 version will be packaged up in Secure Productive Enterprise E3, while the E5 version will be part of Secure Productive Enterprise E5, White wrote.