Didn’t make it to the Microsoft Inspire digital event earlier this week? Don’t worry, we have you covered with a roundup of the 5 key takeaways from the event. 

Microsoft Copilot Pricing

Microsoft Copilot has been a hot topic recently and there was a good chunk of information about Copilot during the Inspire event. If you aren’t familiar, Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI Large Language Model (LLM) tool that can help you write, summarise, and create from within the Microsoft Office applications. You can liken it to a ChatGPT-style solution that has knowledge on all individual Office apps. 

So, we now have a price for Microsoft 365 Copilot. At $30 per user/month for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium customers when generally available. What we don’t know is when it will be generally available. Consumer users are also not expected to be offered Copilot capabilities any time soon.

Copilot application for Sales teams

Continuing with Copilot, a new application called Sales Copilot, which embeds Copilot functionality and CRM data from Salesforce, Dynamics 365 or other platforms within Microsoft 365 was also announced. Sales Copilot includes automated information about sales opportunities, integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot and PowerPoint and tips generated in real time in a team meeting, such as providing context when the customer mentions a competitor. Sales Copilot will be generally available starting July 18.

Upgrade to Azure migration support program

Microsoft’s Azure Migration and Modernisation Program (AMMP) has a new name! Now the program will be referred to as Azure Migrate and Modernise. 

The shorter-named program offers an expanded set of features, including assessments and deeper partner incentives, as well as support for additional workloads like high-performance computing (HPC), Oracle, Linux, SAP, and mainframe migrations. Microsoft also announced the company’s intention to make a “substantial investment to increase the scale and availability” of Azure Migrate and Modernise. 

Bing Chat Enterprise

Say hello to Bing Chat Enterprise, a new offering available July 18, created in part to address enterprise concerns about privacy, such as company-wide generative AI. With Bing Chat Enterprise, commercial data protection will make sure enterprise user data is not mixed with web data, not shared with Microsoft and not used to train any AI models. It will include up-to-date information sourced from Bing search. 

Bing Chat Enterprise is included for no cost with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium plans. Microsoft also expects to offer it from within Windows Copilot in the future, and at $5 per user per month as a stand-alone application.

Azure Boost

At Inspire 2023, Microsoft announced the preview of Microsoft Azure Boost, a new system that will deliver improvements in performance, security, and reliability. 

Traditionally, virtualization processes including networking, storage, and host management will be handled by the hypervisor and host OS. But in the new Azure Boost these processes will be performed by purpose-built hardware and software to deliver improved network and storage performance, enhanced security and reduces the maintenance impact. Microsoft Azure Boost is currently in preview phase. 

To find out more about any of these announcements and other areas covered, you can learn more via the Microsoft Inspire webpage: https://news.microsoft.com/inspire-2023/