class="news-template-default single single-news postid-7042 wp-custom-logo tribe-no-js">
Copilot for Microsoft 365 Announcement
Today marks the start of the Microsoft AI (Artificial Intelligence) era for all businesses the world over. As the team in MWH slept dreaming of a world where copilots were available for all, so we could stop saying to our partners and their clients that they cannot have it just yet, our dreams became reality.
The dawn of the new day brought the announcement that Microsoft had released Copilot for Microsoft 365 for everyone. The A.I (Artificial Intelligence). message from Microsoft had been hinting at us for months with the speculation of a productivity tools driven by AI that can change how we work and promises to return something that is very precious, TIME.
The modern work team in MWH have been following the news from Microsoft and the 40% of the fortune 100 companies that participated in the early access program for Copilot for Microsoft 365 since November last year. We attended event after event, learned about the features that were planned, and yesterday I got to see a demo of Copilot for Microsoft 365 myself for the first time.
It did exactly what it said it would and was amazing to watch in full flow. Your customers and you as a partner community should be excited about the promise this new service brings.
The announcement made yesterday evening by Microsoft (daytime for the states) was made here: Copilot for Microsoft 365: expanded partner opportunity – Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program
The summary of that is here:
Today, we are announcing that as of January 16, 2024, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is generally available across all sales channels including Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) new commerce.
Starting today:
- Commercial customers with Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Office 365 E3/E5, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard/Business Premium prerequisite base SKUs will be able to purchase the Copilot for Microsoft 365 add-on SKU across all sales channels – CSP, EA (Enterprise Agreement), MCA-E, EAS, and direct from Microsoft online.
- Education customers with Microsoft 365 A3/A5, and Office 365 A3/A5 will be able to purchase through EES.
- We are removing the minimum seat purchase requirement for Copilot for Microsoft 365 across all channels and segments; however, customers must have a product license of one of the prerequisite base SKUs for each seat of Copilot for Microsoft 365 they purchase.
- To help every customer get AI-ready, Office 365 E3 and E5 licenses will include Semantic Index for Copilot. Semantic Index for Copilot is critical to getting relevant, actionable responses to prompts in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
- Partners can refer to the announcement in Partner Center (available January 16) for more information on how they can transact Microsoft 365 Copilot today.
An annual offer in CSP can be bought by partners for their clients at $360 per user. However, the CSP price file will not be officially updated until February, so you will not see the price in CSP until then. However, you can still assign licences from today via your clients’ partner centre. As mentioned before, only an annual upfront option is available now. This might change later, and we will keep you informed as we learn more.
This is a hugely exciting time for modern work partners with a hugely innovative technology now part of the offering you can give to your clients. Below I have shared some guidance for you to start conversations with your clients on how Copilot for Microsoft 365 can help people in their business in their workdays.
Client Use cases (As we see it, currently)
Your clients may have many questions about who can benefit from this service. Here are some examples of various positions in businesses and how Copilot for Microsoft 365 can help people with their regular tasks.
Executives:
68% of executives state that they do not have enough uninterrupted time in their diary during the workday. Here is how Copilot can help them in a day:
Operations:
Many people (80%) would not mind having AI create summaries of their meetings and notes. Our operations teams often must deal with all parts of our businesses, so giving them more time with Copilot for Microsoft 365’s help will be unbelievably valuable for any business.
Sales
Salespeople are always busy, they are always playing catch-up, so giving them more time and enabling them to concentrate on sales activities that have the most impact will advance your businesses.
Marketing:
Accelerate your Marketing teams creative processes and your time to market by leveraging AI tools in Copilot for Microsoft 365.
I could go on with scenarios, but we can cover this with partners in our upcoming AI sales enablement sessions. Keep an eye out for these on our Events Archive – MicroWarehouse (mwh.ie)
Considerations you and your clients should have.
This is an extremely exciting announcement, and you might want to just buy and assign right away, which you can do, but start with a small number of users. Customers should work with their partners to get their environment ready for the best experience with Copilot for Microsoft 365. Think about your use cases, choose your users that will get the most value from this new tool, check your data access and controls, set up your DLP and any classifications that will help protect your data, and then see the full power of copilot in action.
For partners looking to skill up on compliance tools we have a great compliance session over 3 Fridays starting on the 2nd of February. See here: Microsoft Purview – Sensitivity Labelling Best Practices – MicroWarehouse (mwh.ie)
This situation of CSP and AI keeps evolving quickly, and we are doing our best to ensure that our partners receive the most up-to-date information as soon as possible. Stay tuned for more news and updates on our blogs and your email. And of course, you can always reach us by teams call or phone to talk with us and get help with understanding the opportunity this offers for you and your clients.