Updated: April 8, 2024 (July 18, 2023)
BlogMicrosoft 365 Copilot: Coming to Office apps near you for $30 per user per month
Even though it unveiled its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant technology in March, Microsoft until now has not released pricing, licensing or availability information for the AI-assistant tool, much to the annoyance of many of its customers, partners and company watchers. However, on July 18, the opening day of its annual Inspire partner show, officials finally revealed pricing plans for Microsoft 365 Copilot: It will be $30 per user per month add-on to E3, E5 and a couple of SMB-focused plans.
Microsoft looks to be attempting to offer those who consider $360 per year to be too pricey an alternative. Today, Microsoft officials also took the wraps off Bing Chat Enterprise, another generative AI service aimed at businesses, which will be available for no additional cost for some enterprise users, and for $5 per user per month for others.
Directions on Microsoft analysts were split on how they believe Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing will fly with customers (a number of whom have continued to assume wrongly that Microsoft would make M365 Copilot available for free)).
At $30 per user per month, Microsoft 365 Copilot will cost almost as much as a Microsoft 365 E3 license (at $36 per user per month) — a fee some Directions analysts considered exorbitant. But if Microsoft 365 Copilot really does perform as has been demonstrated, some customers might buy in, others said.
“The pitch of a dollar a day to significantly increase the productivity of an employee might work,” said Directions on Microsoft analyst Rob Sanfilippo.
Microsoft still is not disclosing how or when it plans to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot beyond some fairly vague statements. Microsoft officials have said that Microsoft 365 Copilot will help customers learn how to use its apps and features — for example, to turn a report into a 10-slide PowerPoint deck. Microsoft 365 Copilot also could assist users in drafting emails and documents; creating spreadsheets based on natural-language commands, and, via a capability called “Business Chat,” combining information from Microsoft 365 apps and data to do more complex tasks, such as “Tell my team how we updated our product strategy last week.”
Currently, Microsoft 365 Copilot is in private preview with up to 600 invited, paying customers, officials have said. Officials have declined to say when and if Microsoft plans to broaden the private preview or open up a public preview ahead of releasing Microsoft 365 Copilot commercially.
In an interview published in June this year, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro did say “you should expect people to have them (M365 Copilots) in production easily this fall. By the end of this summer, we’ll be showing some of what customers are doing with it. The tech is there.” When I asked whether Microsoft would support customers using preview versions of Microsoft 365 Copilot in production with something like a “Go Live”-type license, a spokesperson said Microsoft had “nothing to share.”
In last week’s virtual Microsoft 365 Copilot “Ask Me Anything” (during which Microsoft officials barred questions on pricing, licensing and availability), officials reiterated that Microsoft 365 Copilot will be an add-on license requiring users to have Microsoft E3, E5, Business Standard or Business Premium. Organizations will be able to assign Copilot licenses to specific users who have a base license. Initially, Microsoft 365 Copilot will work for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Loop and Teams. Microsoft plans to integrate Microsoft 365 Copilot directly into the UI for these apps.
The only Microsoft “Copilot” that is currently generally available is GitHub Copilot. Microsoft sells GitHub Copilot, its developer-focused AI pair-programming technology, for US$10 per user per month (or US$100 per user per year) for individuals. GitHub Copilot for Business is US$19 per user per month. For that price, developers get everything in Copilot for Individuals, plus license management, organization-wide policy management, privacy capabilities, and VPN support.
The (Dynamics 365) copilots which Microsoft announced earlier this year are next in line to go GA. They will be available for no additional charge for customers with licenses in premium offers such as D365 Sales Enterprise, D365 Sales Premium, and D365 Customer Service Enterprise, D365 Finance, D365 Supply Chain Management, D365 Project Operations. Dynamics 365 Copilot will be sold as an add-on to other plans, most likely for Professional licenses.
At the Inspire show today, Microsoft also announced Sales Copilot, which officials are calling “a seller companion.” (If that sounds familiar, it should, as this is how Microsoft branded its Viva Sales product announced a year ago.) Viva Sales is now considered part of Sales Copilot, the new AI-specific capabilities will be part of a standalone subscription, as well as made available in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium licenses for no additional cost.
Bing Chat’s enterprise play
In other related news announced on Day 1 of Inspire, Microsoft officials also said they are bringing to market a version of Bing Chat for business users. Called “Bing Chat Enterprise,” this version of Microsoft’s AI-enhanced Bing chat bot will be available in preview starting today for organizations with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Premium and Business Standard. It will be available to these customers for no additional cost. Microsoft also plans to make Bing Chat Enterprise a standalone subscription at some point in the future, priced at $5 per user per month.
Meant to work similarly to the Bing Chatbot for consumers, which is powered by Microsoft’s adaptation of OpenAI’s ChatGPT large language model (LLM) technology, Bing Chat Enterprise will provide “AI-powered chat for work with commercial data protection,” according to the company. (I’m assuming this means it will rely on the security and privacy controls baked into the Microsoft 365 E3/E5/Business Premium services that are required to prevent organizations’ data from “leaking,” but Microsoft never actually spelled this out. Officials said Bing Chat Enterprise won’t save chats and Microsoft will not be privy to the results of searches done with it.) Update: I was wrong. Bing Chat Enterprise does not rely on the Microsoft 365 security and privacy services; it only offers the aforementioned “commercial data protection” guarantees. It does require Azure Active Directory (newly renamed “Entra ID”).
Bing Chat Enterprise has nothing directly to do with the aforementioned and similarly named “Business Chat” capability that Microsoft is building into Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft Search in Bing, which also provides a “work” vertical in Bing search results for those who sign into Bing with their work and school accounts, will continue to be supported. Unlike Bing Chat Enterprise, Search in Bing does not have an AI chatbot front end.
“Bing Chat Enterprise lets you use the power of generative AI at work, with commercial data protection. Microsoft 365 Copilot takes this to the next level and adds a superset of features that enable people to be productive and creative at work in a whole new way by grounding answers in your business data like documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings and more to deliver incredibly rich and actionable responses to your questions,” said a spokesperson when I asked for the differences between Bing Chat Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Copilot — besides the price.
