Microsoft 365 Copilot 'generally available' – if you can afford 300 seats

Microsoft has made Microsoft 365 Copilot generally available for enterprises worldwide. But you'll need to buy at least 300 seats for the privilege and customers are not feeling festive. The $30 per user per month cost is in addition to what a customer is already paying for an E3 or E5 subscription, and so – in some cases – …

[itbod]

Hardware Requirements

Wonder how much cloud hardware is required to run Microsoft 365 Copilot AI, does each customer need dedicated hardware ? Is that the reason for the 300 user minimum?

[Refugee from Windows]

Re: Hardware Requirements

Is that in a larger company there's enough meat for it to sample? The AI needs to expand its language model.

So lets say Eisenhower was using this in 1944, and then Copilot suggested Normandy to a Mr Rommel as it had seen more references to it than Pas de Calais.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Re: Hardware Requirements

"It looks like you're trying to defend the Atlantic Wall - would you like some help with that?"

[elsergiovolador]

Too small

The idea is that small businesses are seen as a hassle and not worth the time.

Big companies want the hardworking and creative people who start these small businesses to work for them instead.

These big companies try to make it very hard for small businesses to succeed by lobbying governments to introduce varying degrees of red tape or just outright prevent small business from running (like recently changed IR35 in the UK). They want to stop people from starting their own businesses.

If someone can't keep their business going, they'll eventually have to find employment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nearly 10k a month or take a hike

These terms will probably flip, but I also expect that end users will be able to subscribe shortly for their personal accounts, so this won't remain locked up indefinitely. If it does you will probably see MSPs jump into the fray and allow companies to by virtual desktop seats.

Either way this is probably to ease the rollout from the M$ side, as they will be dealing with customers that can afford some in-house IT and support staff. Once the unwashed masses weigh in the support department can look forward to spending three hours at a time explaining to octogenarians where the "Anykey" is in the most patient of terms.

[ecofeco]

First...

First they have to prove of what use it is.

Or maybe not considering how many rubes there are in the world who just see "shiny" and think, "the precious!"

[brianabdm]

I use MailMaestro, it doesn't support all of the 365 suite but for Outlook it's far superior and comes in starting at half the price.

[ChoHag]

You will have Clippy, and you will like it.

[Mike007]

Copilot is smarter.

"It looks like you are writing a negative comment about Microsoft, would you like to keep your files?"

[M.V. Lipvig]

M$ COPILOT?

Whatever happened to "M$ elements may not be used where there is life?"

[NeilPost]

“Microsoft has bet big on AI, commissioning studies spewing statistics such as "For every $1 a company invests in AI, it is realizing an average return of $3.5X."”

1. Bullshit

2. $30 bucks a month to automate deficiencies on the M365 ecosystem - ROFLMAO. How about sorting out the dogs-dinner that’s Teams first.

[John69]

Can this be done in open source?

It seems the components are there. With all the models on HuggingFace, libreoffice and the noncommercial text and data mining exception to copyright this shoud be doable and it shoudl be able to eclipse the non-comercial models is they are restricted in what they can use to train.

[quartzie]

Not all roses for SMBs

Having had first-hand experience with this, I can vouch that most SMBs do not want to dedicate their IT time to deploy Copilot on M365 in a safe and sensible manner.

It is far more involved, requires re-thinking your data storage, labeling and correct permission setup to work as intended - and ONLY as intended.

On top of that, Copilot is still very much under development and it's hard to rely on in anything business-critical.

[43300]

"M365 Copilot "requires a minimum purchase of 300 seats," and this is causing some annoyance among SMEs."

Why? What the fuck would most of them actually use it for in reality?

[Paul Hovnanian]

Automate and simplify

"Business leaders are twice as likely to say AI will provide value by boosting productivity vs cutting headcount."

But that's probably more accurate for small businesses (who have market room to grow) than large ones who probably can't seize more market share as easily than cutting costs (headcount) to grow profits.

"So what's the point? For users with deep enough pockets and in the cross hairs of Microsoft's marketing team, the technology promises the ability to chat with the company's productivity tools and create what Microsoft calls an 'AI-employee alliance.'"

I suspect that this is closer to the truth. It's easier for Microsoft to slip new products into companies by finding a few allies that can bring stuff in unnoticed until it's too late to stop its adoption. Not as easy to do in a company with two IT people sitting a few feet from the CEO'S office.