Tag Archives: Microsoft 365

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.

Microsoft 365 Premium

Microsoft announce Microsoft 365 Premium, a new offering exclusively for consumers. Not to be confused with Microsoft 365 Business Premium, this subscription combines Microsoft 365 Family with Copilot Pro, allowing six users access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, along with 1 TB of cloud storage each. There are also advanced AI features only available to the subscription owner, which include the highest available usage limits and the powerful reasoning agents Researcher and Analyst.

Find the details of the announcement here: http://bit.ly/4n1o2Ii.

Microsoft 365 Local and SE products

Microsoft introduced us to the notion of their Sovereign Private Cloud in June 2025 (see the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3KYvuqj). It’s designed for customers who need to meet strict sovereignty requirements and combines Azure Local and Microsoft 365 Local. Azure Local’s been around a while, but Microsoft 365 Local is new. It’s built on the Azure Local infrastructure, and enables organisations to deploy the traditional Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server products entirely within their sovereign environment. To that end, the new SE versions of these products will be supported until at least 31 December, 2035.

Find information on Microsoft 365 Local here: https://bit.ly/3Wosztx, and the earliest End of Support date information here: https://bit.ly/48QNrRC.

Microsoft rebrand security and compliance suites for Enterprise plans

Microsoft rebrand the security and compliance suite Add-ons for Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans from 1 October, 2025. This aligns the names with the recently introduced SMB security and compliance suites which you can read more about on our blog here: https://bit.ly/3IsVjhH. The functionality remains the same, with Microsoft 365 E5 Security now becoming the Microsoft Defender Suite, and Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance becoming the Microsoft Purview Suite.

Find out the details here: https://bit.ly/46R1KTE.

Teams or no Teams?

Microsoft announce that the inclusion of Teams will once more be an option for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suite customers. From 1 November, 2025 Office 365 E1/E3/E5 and Microsoft 365 E3/E5 will be available both with and without Teams, alongside the Frontline Worker and Business suites which continue to be available with or without Teams.

Find the details in the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/3WccCXc, along with information about other changes made in response to European competition concerns.

Security and compliance Add-ons for Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Microsoft announce a range of security and compliance Add-ons for Microsoft 365 Business Premium. From a security perspective, there’s the Microsoft Defender Suite for Business Premium, costing $10 per user per month, and for compliance there’s the Microsoft Purview Suite for Business Premium, also costing $10 per user per month. Alternatively, the Microsoft Defender and Purview Suites for Business Premium are a cost effective way of purchasing everything at $15 per user per month.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3JUp635, with details of what components are in which suite.

Changes to Copilot licensing

Microsoft announce a number of changes to Copilot licensing.

Firstly, there’s more usage of AI tools included in a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, and consumption is now measured in Copilot Credits, rather than messages.

Secondly, there’s a spot of renaming for the Copilot Studio experiences: Agent Builder, when you’re using Copilot Studio as a Microsoft 365 Copilot user, is now called Copilot Studio Lite, with the full experience being (helpfully) called Copilot Studio Full.

And there are changes to the Role Based Copilots too – from 10 October, 2025 if you’ve got a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence you won’t need to pay extra for Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, or Copilot for Finance (aka Finance Agents) – they’ll just be available to install from the Agent Store.

Grab the datasheet with this information here: https://bit.ly/46597I7.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (June 2025) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with some small changes getting everything up to date: adding in a row for Microsoft Security Exposure Management, for example.

These useful documents tell you which of the (many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/43CpQQk), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/45Cb4M4), and one for Education customers (https://bit.ly/4jxBG4j), and still more for specialist US customers – one for GCC (https://bit.ly/3FEFUcq), one for GCC High (https://bit.ly/3ZH8yAn) and the final one for DoD (https://bit.ly/4kHl3EV).

And, if you’re a partner, we do have a June 2025 Excel version of these files. Drop us an email on info@licensingschool.co.uk from your work email address and we’ll send it on.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise licensing guidance document

There’s an updated (May 2025) Microsoft 365 Enterprise licensing guidance document from Microsoft. There aren’t major changes to the content – and that’s a shame. When it was last updated in February 2024, we highlighted the fact that there were too many errors and chunks of out-of-date information. As time has gone on, the information is even more out-of-date and, yes, there are more errors.

For those of us who nevertheless like a complete set of Microsoft’s documentation, find this guide here: https://bit.ly/4kFhwGG.

Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents

There are updated (May 2025) Microsoft 365 plan comparison documents with some small changes getting everything up to date: adding Microsoft 365 Business Premium as an eligible prerequisite for Microsoft 365 E5 Security, for example.

These useful documents tell you which of the (many) different components are included in which Office 365/Microsoft 365 plan, and there’s a table for SMB customers (https://bit.ly/434vH29), one for Enterprise customers (https://bit.ly/3F5GCzh), and one for Education customers (https://bit.ly/4muUpQX), and still more for specialist US customers – one for GCC (https://bit.ly/437WyJe), one for GCC High (https://bit.ly/4kgHD6C) and the final one for DoD (https://bit.ly/3YJxpTY).

And, if you’re a partner, we do have an April 2025 Excel version of these files. Drop us an email on info@licensingschool.co.uk from your work email address and we’ll send it on.