After a seemingly successful preview period, Microsoft’s Copilot for Security is now generally available.
Capabilities
Copilot for Security has a range of features and capabilities that help organisations across the range of Microsoft’s security products such as Defender, Intune, and Purview. These include:
Teams has been “consciously decoupled*” from Microsoft 365 on a global basis, so they’re now only available separately to new users. Existing users can continue to renew but if you need to buy both, it equals more cash more Microsoft.
Teams Enterprise is now listed, which appears to be the standalone version of Teams. From a naming perspective, “that “Enterprise” sounds “bigger” than “Premium” (which is a paid add-on) so I’d expect a rebrand at some point soon🤔
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Premium has been added…plus another error as “Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management” is listed as having a minimum purchase quantity of both 10 and 20…clearly one should say “Premium” at the end (the one with 10 I believe).
They’ve still not corrected the D364 error from last month either 🤣
Microsoft have announced the end of Power BI Premium Capacity SKUs in favour of the newer and shinier Microsoft Fabric. Note that the “Power BI Premium per-user” SKU is unaffected.
Key dates
New customers will not be able to purchase Power BI Premium after July 1st, 2024.
Existing non-EA customers can renew until Jan 1st, 2025. If your renewal date is after that, you will need to transition to Fabric at renewal. Additional Power BI Premium capacity can be purchased until the end of the agreement.
EA customers can continue with Power BI Premium until the end of their contract. If that is post Jan 1st, 2025 they will need to switch to Fabric at renewal. Additional Power BI Premium capacity can be purchased until the end of the agreement.
Sovereign Cloud customers are unaffected as they don’t currently have access to Fabric.
Benefits and differences
Fabric is the evolution of Power BI Premium and the next step in Microsoft’s organisation wide data analytics strategy. Thus, as well as the Power BI Premium functionality, Fabric contains additional services and features such as OneLake and various Azure services. Additional benefits include:
Fabric can be used to contribute towards your MACC (Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment) agreement.
There is a Pay As You go (PAYG) option for Fabric.
Fabric SKUs start at a lower point that Power BI Premium. However, note that Copilot for Power BI (which I assume will become Copilot for Fabric) doesn’t work for the lower end SKUs.
Of course, there is always something that is removed or made more complicated with any product retirement and this is no different.
Each Power BI Premium capacity P-SKU includes the ability to run Power BI Report Server on-premises…but Microsoft Fabric does not, and is not compatible with it. To continue accessing Power BI Report Server, you will need to have SQL Server Enterprise w/SA instead.
Microsoft have announced expanded Copilot for M365 access to a range of new SKUs including:
M365 F1/F3 Office 365 E1 M365 Business Basic
The Microsoft post says “and more” so we’ll have to wait for the full list to appear soon.
This change means that a huge additional number of Microsoft users will be able to buy it the new AI tool.
I have a couple of initial questions:
1) Why do this now?
I thought it would take a lot longer to get to this point. This feels like Microsoft are not selling Copilot for M365 anywhere near the rate they expected/want/need and so, to help recoup more of the enormous amount of money that must have been spent, they’re widening the pool quickly.
2) What about the price?
Are orgs really going to spend an additional $30 per user on top of these low cost SKUs? Particularly where the users will likely have fewer opportunities to benefit from Copilot’s assistance? I think perhaps we’re about to see a price drop or tiered pricing… I.e. Copilot for M365 Standard and Premium.
Since the introduction of Copilot for Microsoft 365, one of the big questions I, and others, have been asking is “how do you determine value?”. I laid out my initial concerns, questions, and actions here and now want to look at Microsoft’s offerings to enable this kind of insight. Currently available in preview (https://insights.cloud.microsoft/#/CopilotDashboard) – although I couldn’t get it to work – Microsoft’s Copilot Dashboard is their option to get the much needed insights.
Microsoft Copilot Dashboard
Microsoft aim for this to help customers across the 3 stages of the adoption journey:
It will show:
Who is eligible for Copilot for M365
How people are currently using M365 apps
How people are using Copilot and in which different apps
Information on how Copilot is impacting productivity
Microsoft are referring to it as “Microsoft Copilot Dashboard, powered by Viva” and from “early 2024” there will be additional dashboard features available to users with Viva Insights licenses. According to Microsoft, these will include:
“Copilot adoption and usage metrics combined with collaboration data, out-of-the box reports for organizational leaders, before and after behavioral data and even insights from employee surveys.”
and will also show time spent in meetings, processing emails, and creating content with before and after Copilot information.
All in all, the Copilot dashboard will be useful for organisations looking to understand more about their Copilot readiness and then their Copilot usage. However, some may have concerns about the reliability and objectivity of the data and reports generated by Microsoft on their own software. Ideally, Microsoft will be transparent and accountable in how they collect, process, and share the data from the Copilot dashboard. They should also provide ways for users to verify, challenge, or complement the data with their own sources and feedback.
Let’s look at the numbers and main takeaways from Microsoft’s FY24 Q2 earnings. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of talk about AI with Satya Nadella saying:
“We’ve moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale.
By infusing AI across every layer of our tech stack, we’re winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains.”
Headline numbers
Revenue = $62 billion (increase of 18%)
Net Income = $21.9 billion (increase of 33%)
Within that, what they call “Microsoft Cloud” accounted for $33.7 billion of the revenue – an increase of 24%.
Productivity & Business Processes
Revenue = $19.2 billion (increase of 15%)
Office 365 Commercial up 17%
LinkedIn up 9% (better than expected)
Dynamics 365 up 27%
Intelligent Cloud
Revenue = $25.9 billion
Azure growth was 30% this quarter. That’s 1% higher than last quarter although, in constant currency (where the impact of exchange rates is minimised) it was 28% i.e. 1% lower. Either way, it’s strong growth from Azure again, in no small part thanks to 6 percentage points added by AI.
Side note: The latest quarterly results for Amazon AWS (Q4 FY23) was $24.2 billion -so Azure is, for the first time I think (?), bigger than it’s long standing – and still market leading rival…at least on a quarterly basis.
Earnings Call Highlights
Over 53,000 Azure AI customers and over 1/3 of them are new Azure customers within the last 12 months.
Nadella mentions “an increase in the number of billion-dollar-plus Azure commitments“, citing Vodafone’s $1.5 billion commitment over the next 10 years.
Cosmos DB gets another shout out – and 42% YoY increase in data transactions…definitely a golden child product at the moment.
Over 400 million paid Office 365 seats which is a 9% YoY increase, primarily driven by SMB and Frontline SKUs.
On-premises server revenue increased 3% – driven by Windows Server 2012 end of life. That could be customers upgrading to newer versions but I’d wager a lot of it is Extended Security Update (ESU) revenue…
Nadella mentions the upcoming dedicated “Copilot” key on new Windows devices…
Microsoft have retired the “From SA” license offering starting from February 1, 2024 for Microsoft 365.
What are they?
Introduced in 2015, these licenses were Cloud USLs at a reduced price for customers who had on-premises licenses with active Software Assurance (SA) and aimed to make it less costly for them to move to Microsoft’s Online Services.
What’s changed?
Microsoft say that “Cloud services are now the predominant way customers use Microsoft products and services” and so these From SA SKUs are no longer needed.
Microsoft 365
Feb 1st 2024: You won’t be able to order additional or new From SA subscription licenses for Microsoft 365 and its standalone products. The impacted products are:
Core CAL Suite Bridge for Office 365 From SA
Enterprise CAL Bridge for Enterprise Mobility + Security From SA (User SL)
Enterprise CAL Suite Bridge for Office 365 From SA
Enterprise Mobility + Security E3/E5/G3/G5 From SA
Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise From SA
Microsoft 365 E3/E5/G3/G5 From SA
Microsoft Teams Phone Standard From SA
Office 365 E1/E3/E5/G1/G3/G5 From SA
Project Plan 1/3/5 From SA
Visio Online Plan 1 and 2 From SA
Windows 11 Enterprise E3/E5/G5 From SA
Office Professional Plus rights
There is now also wording that states any “licensed user” who used a device licensed with all 3 of:
Windows OS w/SA
Core/Enterprise CAL w/SA
Office Professional Plus w/SA
and has now been assigned a Microsoft 365 E3/E5 User SL can install a local copy of Office Professional Plus for the duration of the USL subscription.
This section from MS isn’t totally clear as to what it is saying/changing so questions/thoughts welcome. I think the phrase “transformed from SA” is new and is doing some of the work here…
Dynamics 365
April 1st 2024: You won’t be able to order additional or new From SA subscription licenses for Dynamics 365. The impacted products are:
Dynamics 365 Business Central Device From SA
Dynamics 365 Business Central Essentials From SA
Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium From SA
Dynamics 365 Business Central Team Members From SA
Dynamics 365 Commerce From SA
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise From SA
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise Device From SA
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional From SA
Dynamics 365 Human Resources From SA
Dynamics 365 Field Services From SA
Dynamics 365 Finance From SA
Dynamics 365 Operations – Activity From SA
Dynamics 365 Operations – Device From SA
Dynamics 365 Project Operations From SA
Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise From SA
Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Device From SA
Dynamics 365 Sales Professional From SA
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management From SA
Dynamics 365 Team Members From SA
However, there will be a time limited “promotional migration offer” being made available to EA customers by April 1st to help customers migrate.
Any licenses purchased before the change date can continue to be renewed but quantities can’t be increased.
You can see the Microsoft announcement here. Interestingly, it’s dated December 15th but it hasn’t been publicised until today – or at least I didn’t see it!
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 