Microsoft 365 Copilot is added It’s listed for Enterprise Agreements (as expected) but also the MCA (Microsoft Customer Agreement) and nowhere is there any mention of a 300 license minimum.
I assume it is listed under MCA as it’s available on the MCA for Enterprise Customers aka MCA-E – that is for Enterprise customers buying directly from Microsoft rather than those in the CSP channel. It’s rightly been noted that Copilot isn’t visible on the public pricelists so almost certainly isn’t magically available via CSP but without clarifying text in the Product Terms (or anywhere else), it’s not clear. Nothing like a bit of licensing confusion for one of the biggest product releases in ages!
System Center is added to CSP and the “16-cores” per customer requirement is removed when licensing by virtual OSE.
There’s a new AI related term too: “Excessive use of a Microsoft Generative AI Service may result in temporary throttling of Customer’s access to the Microsoft Generative AI Service“
Microsoft have announced a new offering, Microsoft Copilot.
No, I haven’t been under a rock for the last 12 months…I know there are already a bunch of Copilots but it looks like Microsoft have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to bundle some of the Copilots (but not all of them) together into 1 thing called Copilot 🙄
The entity known as “Microsoft Copilot” will include (if that is the right word?):
Windows 11
Microsoft 365
Edge
Bing
Microsoft say:
“Copilot will begin to roll out in its early form as part of our free update to Windows 11, starting Sept. 26 — and across Bing, Edge, and Microsoft 365 Copilot this fall.”
With regards to the M365 piece, I think it means that “Copilot” will be able to interact with M365 Copilot – rather than include its capabilities…but it’s not really clear.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Release date
Microsoft have announced that Microsoft 365 Copilot General Availability for Enterprise customers is November 1, 2023. There is a 300 user minimum purchase for Copilot too – meaning a $9,000 per month spend at least. While it’s a surprise to see this minimum, it’s not a huge outlay for most Enterprise Agreement customers really.
It’s been noted that 300 is the maximum for the Business plans so, despite announcing a Copilot add for Business SKUs, this effectively precludes the majority of SMBs. In my opinion, Microsoft will reduce/remove the minimum at the point they make Copilot available on other agreements.
Why is there a minimum? That’s a great question and one that we don’t have a definite answer for. It seems most likely that Copilot needs a certain amount of data (and perhaps connections )to really work its magic – although, saying that, all the Copilot examples I’ve seen wouldn’t seem to require that. They’ve all focused on individual areas – add a column to this table, calculate the average sales for next year, makes all slides the same font etc. and that wouldn’t need aggregated internal training data.
Some people suggest it’s to set a minimum revenue threshold but I’m not sure about that either tbh.
New feature
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat works across all your data including, but not limited to:
Emails
Meetings
Chats
Documents
Web
and will work as an assistant that understands “you, your job, your priorities and your organization“.
Big thanks to Jack Rowbotham, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager, for sharing this info on LinkedIn 😊
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 