It was perhaps inevitable that the epicentre of Microsoft Inspire 2023 would be its hotly anticipated AI-powered productivity tool, Copilot.
Among the new features that Microsoft announced were Copilot capabilities for Teams Phone and Chat, including aids to unscheduled phone calls and enhanced chat conversations.
Copilot introduced generative AI to phone calls for Teams Phone. With this new capability, users could make and receive calls from their Teams app on any device and get real-time summarisation and insights.
For Teams chat, users could quickly synthesise critical information from their chat threads, enabling them to ask specific questions to catch up on the conversation so far, manage key discussion points, and summarise data relevant to their workflows.
Several new(ish) Copilot solutions were announced, including AI-powered improvements to its Dynamics 365 Sales platform. The latest enhancements to Microsoft Sales Copilot within Dynamics 365 Sales cover an AI-generated opportunity summary, contextualised email drafts, and meeting preparations.
These capabilities compound the current AI features in Microsoft Sales Copilot, such as Teams call summaries and email thread summaries.
There was also clarification about Copilot’s approach to security and privacy.
Microsoft affirmed that Copilot ensures seamless integration with existing Microsoft 365 security, privacy, identity, and compliance policies. Microsoft described that data stays under the enterprise’s control and is “logically isolated and protected” within its Microsoft 365 tenant. At the tenant level, Copilot adheres to individual and group permission policies, granting appropriate access to authorised personnel.
Where Do These Announcements Leave Copilot Ahead of its Launch Later this Year?
Copilot will be integrated across the Microsoft 365 suite, including Word, Excel, Power, Outlook, and Teams. From intelligent Teams meeting recaps to drafting Outlook emails with different tones, its exhaustive (and growing) list of productivity-enhancing features and updates is an increasingly attractive product that could be a game-changer for how many businesses and industries operate.
However, Copilot’s price also raised a few eyebrows at Inspire. Copilot will cost $30 per user per month and will be available for users with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium users when it becomes generally available.
The addition of Copilot would almost double the cost for Microsoft E3 subscribers. For E3, Microsoft currently charges businesses $36 per user per month, including Office apps, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Customers who subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business Standard now pay $12.50 per user per month, almost a third of the extra Copilot expense. Copilot is a substantial premium on top of these original subscriptions.
This pricing might not prove excessively steep for many global enterprises whose workforces number in the tens of thousands and whose tech budgets are robust, many of whom participated in Microsoft’s Copilot Early Access Programme, which recently expanded to 600 companies.
Microsoft initially tested Copilot via invitation-only previews between March and May with 20 business customers, partly comprised of Fortune 500 companies. That business pool grew to an initial wave of 600 after “overwhelming feedback” — as described by Jared Spataro, CVP of Modern Work and Business Applications at Microsoft — from those companies with early preview access, including Lumen, KPMG, and Emirates NBD.
Such overwhelming feedback suggests been many of these global enterprises would be keen to continue with Copilot subscriptions once it becomes generally available.
However, $30 per user per month is a significant cost for many SMBs. For a medium-sized business of 200 employees (and tech users) to subscribe to Copilot for a year, they would have to pay an annual subscription of $72,000 on top of their current Microsoft enterprise offering. Ultimately, it could be prohibitively expensive — and illustrate a technology disparity in business.
In spring, UC Today spoke to business user Eddie Nesbeth, a Collaborative Applications Analyst and Product Owner at Davidson College, North Carolina, about Copilot’s Early Access Programme and how it’s almost always global, large-scale enterprises that are privy to these preview programmes.
“We’re a liberal arts college in North Carolina,” Nesbeth said, “just over 2000 students. I know Copilot is being tested right now. I think they said some Fortune 500 companies are testing it, and we’re never going to be among those.”
“We’re never going to be in those conversations, so sometimes, yes, that can be a harrowing reminder of where you are in that hierarchy of companies. My day-to-day work and what’s important to me in my job; for some people, that doesn’t even register anywhere on their radar.”
This doesn’t disparage Microsoft or the large enterprises they do business with in these preview stages. It’s only rational to prioritise collaborating with your biggest customers on these ground-breaking, innovative projects. These businesses also have the scale and infrastructure to test the product across various use cases. They are also as deserving of preview access as any other company.
Additionally, the logic behind Microsoft’s high pricing is understandable. Microsoft has spent billions of dollars on its burgeoning OpenAI partnership to build Copilot. At the same time, expensive Nvidia GPUs have had to have been sourced to power the AI functionality — during an AI chip shortage, which has increased prices. The tech giant only naturally wants to see a worthwhile return on investment.
However, Nesbeth’s feeling of dissatisfaction was profound and might echo the thoughts of other tech owners across smaller organisations with relatively limited budgets. Copilot’s pricing could exacerbate that disconnect if its investment simply isn’t affordable.
As with most product launches, Copilot’s first generation could be its most expensive iteration. Perhaps when microchip availability improves and costs come down, or Microsoft develops their own AI chips, as has been reported by The Information, there could be price reductions in the future.
Copilot might facilitate a revolution of productivity — but it may take some time before every business can participate.
