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Copilot is here! “or at least it is for some” :(
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a new service that leverages artificial intelligence to help you create and manage content across your organization. With Copilot, you can generate high-quality text, images, and videos for your documents, presentations, websites, and social media posts. Copilot also helps you optimize your content for SEO, accessibility, and compliance.
This is a very exciting prospect and Microsoft some weeks ago stated it would be available from TODAY the first of November. But….. there was a bit of small print in that announcement and that is as follows:
Yes Microsoft 365 Copilot is available from November 1st but only if you are on an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. If you are on one of these, then you must commit to a 300 user minimum buy in of Copilot that is priced at $30 dollars per user per month. That is a hefty addition to your bill.
There is currently no set date for the release of copilot on CSP. This means that all clients transacting CSP which is a HUGE majority of your customers will not have access to copilot until a wider release date which is not yet defined.
Why is that? Well that’s an easy answer. Microsoft will need to scale up infrastructure and compute power to manage hundreds of millions of users asking AI to help with their jobs. This would cause issues in data centres and ultimately at the end user level, and with the excitement from market analysts and share prices depending on a solid delivery of this service they are taking a pragmatic approach to rolling it out.
But I WANT A.I. NOW
This is what your clients will scream, and sadly they cannot have M365 Copilot just yet. They can however, if they are on M365 Business Standard, Premium, E3 or E5 enable Bing Chat enterprise. (Please note that is Microsoft 365 not Office 365 seats)Bing Chat Enterprise is actually a very useful AI tool and a brilliant alternative to the free version of the popular chat GPT. It is also secure, so you can input business data into the service for contextual responses. This approach will give you a sense of what to expect with the Microsoft 365 Copilot service when it becomes available via CSP.
Info on Bing chat is here: <p>Your AI-powered Chat for Work | Bing Chat Enterprise</p> (microsoft.com)
If you are a Dynamics client or a Salesforce house, you can also get Copilot for Sales. This is a separate add on or included in some Enterprise SKUs that my learned dynamics colleagues will help you identify.
Info of Copilot for sales is here: Microsoft Sales Copilot – AI Sales Tools| Microsoft
Finally, use chat GPT Free if your playing around, or if your trying to get a context based response go PAID as they say they will keep you data safe, but do read the terms on that please.
This is a fast paced area, and beyond all of the marketing excitement and content you see about AI, information of what clients and partners need to do to get ready is slow to come. We are working with the local Microsoft partner Team to get what we can and start sharing.
Keep an eye out on Events Archive – MicroWarehouse (mwh.ie) for training events on Copilot coming soon 🙂
Guido Marchetti,
Microsoft Modern Work & Security Lead