News

Inspire 2023 Highlights: Microsoft Copilot Pricing, Bing for Enterprises and More

• By Gladys Rama
• July 18, 2023

The 2023 Microsoft Inspire conference started Tuesday with the new Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, a rebrand of the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, taking the lion's share of the spotlight. As CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft partner executives explained during Tuesday's keynote, the new program is the "next generation" of the MCPP, retaining all of its current benefits and structure, but with added access to AI-centric perks.

However, there are a slew of other announcements coming out of Inspire this week, including new Bing and Azure solutions and Copilot news. Here are the highlights:

• Pricing Revealed for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Microsoft has broadly described various prerequisites for organizations that want to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot solution once it becomes available, but it finally shared pricing specifics at Inspire. To wit, Microsoft 365 Copilot will cost $30 per user per month for organizations with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium licensing. Currently, it's only accessible to Early Access Program participants.
  
• Enterprise-Grade Bing Chat Hits Preview: Microsoft is developing a version of its ChatGPT 4-enabled Bing search engine that has enterprise-grade security and privacy hooks. Bing Chat Enterprise will keep users' chat inputs, as well as outputs, private. Data is kept private even from Microsoft, meaning it cannot be used to train large language models (LLMs). When it becomes generally available, the standalone Bing Chat Enterprise will be priced at $5 per user per month; currently, however, the preview is available for free to select Microsoft 365 licenses.
  
• Access to Prerelease Microsoft Security Copilot Expanding: Microsoft Security Copilot is still in private preview, but Microsoft is now allowing partners to sign up to participate in the Security Copilot design advisory council. An Early Access Program will also launch sometime this fall for users and partners of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.
  
• Azure Innovate Launched: For partners looking to build AI- and analytics-infused offerings, Microsoft has launched the Azure Innovate resource to provide planning and deployment assistance, marketing materials and more.
  
• 'Azure Migration and Modernization Program' Now Called 'Azure Migrate and Modernize': Microsoft's flagship cloud migration assistance program now has a new name, "Azure Migrate and Modernize," as well as support for more workloads, including high-performance computing, mainframe migrations, and Linux, SAP and Oracle migrations.
• Microsoft Sales Copilot Now Generally Available: A complement to Dynamics CRM Sales, the new Microsoft Sales Copilot solution is now generally available as a standalone subscription or as a free component for organizations with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise & Premium licenses. Microsoft Sales Copilot lets salespersons automate CRM tasks, create meeting summaries, use AI to write e-mails and more.
  
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Coming September: A new Dynamics 365 offering, designed for marketing teams to gain real-time insights on customer profiles and create targeted customer interactions with AI, is now in preview, with general availability set for Sept. 1.
  
• 'AIM' Cloud Migration Program for Dynamics Customers Announced: To help organizations migrate from on-premises Dynamics products (e.g., Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV and Dynamics SL) to their more AI-enabled, cloud-based counterparts, Microsoft has launched the new AIM program (for "Accelerate, Innovate, Move"). Through AIM, customers can access migration assessments and expert guidance for design, planning and deployment. There are also resources for partners to help them migrate customers to the cloud, including access to FastTrack architects.
  
• Power Automate Process Mining Coming August: A new component of Microsoft's low-code Power Platform offering, Power Automate Process Mining, will become generally available on Aug. 1 as an add-on. It's designed to help organizations identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks in their workflows, and how they can apply automation to improve them.
  
• Bing Chat Gets Visual Interpretation Abilities: Rollout has begun for a new feature in Bing Chat that would let users upload a photo and query Bing Chat for context about it.

For more coverage of Inspire 2023, stay tuned to RCPmag.com.