Category Archives: Uncategorized

Azure SRE Agent and AAUs

The Azure SRE Agent is designed to streamline incident response, improve service uptime, and cut operational costs, allowing Site Reliability Engineers to focus on higher-value tasks. Why’s it interesting from a licensing perspective? It’s the first Azure-hosted autonomous Agent that’s billed via a new measure – Azure Agent Units or AAUs. The Azure SRE Agent continuously monitors in the background incurring charges of 4 AAUs an hour and then, when issues are detected, billing is 0.25 of an AAU for every second the Agent is engaged on a task.

Find a good article with some example billing scenarios here: https://bit.ly/47utIGS.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and the Microsoft 365 Apps

The various Copilot offerings have somewhat evolved over time! We have seen Microsoft Copilot become Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, and there are new features being added all the time. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is a collection of AI features, the newest of which is chat functionality within the Microsoft 365 Apps. This means that if you have a valid Microsoft 365 or Office 365 licence, you’ll now find a snazzy sidebar in your apps which is aware of the context of the document you have open, and will provide natural language assistance based on what it sees. No need for a separate Microsoft 365 Copilot licence!

There is more information on the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3DZCgca, along with eligibility criteria here: http://bit.ly/4oycQEb.

Windows 365 20% promotion extended

Microsoft prolong their Windows 365 promotion, which offers a 20% discount to first-time customers. This ties in neatly with the flexibility offered to users of a Windows 10 device (now end of support), as they can continue to receive ESUs whilst accessing Windows 365. The promotion runs until April 30, 2026.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/4hjL2Bc.

Power Platform licensing resources

There are updated (October 2025) Power Platform licensing resources. There aren’t major changes, but there’s a useful one – there’s now a link to the Power BI Licensing Deck included in both the Power Platform Licensing Guide and Licensing Deck.

Find the updated Power Platform guide here: https://bit.ly/4mPwP06, the updated Power Platform deck here: https://bit.ly/4nAVKpo, with the Power BI deck here: https://bit.ly/42Psx1x.

Dragon Copilot availability

Microsoft announce that Dragon Copilot is now also available in France, Germany, Austria, and Ireland.

You can find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4oJIdft, and a useful Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/3WboPM6.

Free Windows 10 ESUs for consumers in the EEA

For consumers accessing Windows 10 Extended Security Updates, this typically requires either syncing your PC to Windows Backup, redeeming 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points or paying the equivalent of $30. However, there’s a notable exception for countries in the European Economic Area. Provided you sign into your device with a Microsoft account, ESUs can be enabled until October 13, 2026 at no extra cost.

This link will take you to your region-specific details depending on your location: https://bit.ly/47g17TR.

New Microsoft 365 Copilot offerings for education

It’s been two years since the release of Microsoft 365 Copilot, and now Microsoft reveal for the first time that there will be a discounted variant for education. Just like the corporate offering, it will include natural language chat, integration with the Microsoft 365 Apps, reasoning across work data, and access to custom and pre-built Agents grounded in your chosen data and files. It will be released in December, 2025 at $18 per user per month, compared to the corporate pricing of $30 per user per month.

The announcement also reveals two other offerings: “Teach” and “Study and Learn”. Teach is (perhaps unsurprisingly) aimed at teachers, giving them an Agent to create lesson plans and help draft teaching resources. Study and Learn is targeted at students, allowing them to tailor and customise learning exercises and activities. These Agents will both be incorporated into the current education offering in the coming weeks at no extra cost.

Find out more here: http://bit.ly/42NPHFy.

Power BI Licensing Deck

Microsoft’s Power BI Licensing Deck is a useful resource for details on licensing across the Power BI portfolio: Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium Per User, Power BI Embedded, and Microsoft Fabric. We found the Fabric section particularly interesting with its pages on how Capacity Units (CUs) work and Copilot in Microsoft Fabric, as well as the licensing scenarios covering Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded.

Help yourself to this Licensing Deck here: https://bit.ly/42Psx1x.

Copilot Studio Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (October 2025) Copilot Studio Licensing Guide with a new section for Computer Use – a capability that enables Agents to interact with websites and desktop apps by clicking buttons, selecting menus, and typing into fields on the screen. Customers have two options for running Computer Use: a hosted browser, powered by Windows 365, or using a Windows machine that they own and manage.

You can find out more about Computer Use as it enters public preview here: https://bit.ly/3LfpGc5, and grab the Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/487GUSk.

Microsoft 365 Apps and Windows 10 End of Support

Windows 10 finally reached its end of support on October 14, 2025. Originally the impact of this deadline meant that running the Microsoft 365 Apps on it would not be supported. This would have affected the two types of updates available for the Microsoft 365 Apps: feature updates for functionality and performance improvements, and the separate security updates for critical patches and bug fixes. Microsoft have since announced an extension on both, with feature updates continuing up to January 12, 2027 (depending on your chosen update channel), and security updates continuing until October 10, 2028.

You can find full details here: http://bit.ly/4qaDXqK.