News
Multinational Partner Cognizant Buys 25,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot Seats
- By Gladys Rama
- April 23, 2024
IT services giant Cognizant, which already has a robust Microsoft cloud MSP business, is now also one of the biggest customers of Redmond's Copilot AI product.
In a joint announcement Monday, the companies announced that Cognizant has signed a deal to buy 25,000 licenses of Microsoft 365 Copilot for internal use, as well as 500 licenses each of Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Service.
Additionally, Cognizant has committed to supporting Microsoft 365 Copilot among its customer base, with a goal of reaching 1 million users.
Given Cognizant's size, it's an accessible goal. According to its Web site, Cognizant, which reported north of $19 billion in revenue in its fiscal 2023, has nearly 350,000 employees worldwide and customers across a wide swath of industries, including healthcare, life sciences, financial services, manufactuing and energy.
In another facet of their partnership, Cognizant and Microsoft will focus on jointly building AI-enabled applications for those industry verticals, using Microsoft's Copilot Studio platform as a launching pad.
"By combining Cognizant's industry expertise with Microsoft's Copilot capabilities -- including Copilot for Microsoft 365and GitHub Copilot -- we will help drive AI adoption and innovation for millions of users across its network," said Microsoft CMO Judson Althoff in a prepared statement.
Cognizant, which holds Microsoft specializations in Modern Work and Security, is fully on board the AI train. Last year, Cognizant committed to spending $1 billion on generative AI initiatives through 2026.
As part of its efforts to that end, the company started an AI training program that has, to date, trained 35,000 of its developers on GitHub Copilot, with 40,000 more developers to go. It also recently opened an AI research lab in San Francisco to support AI research and the development of AI patents.
"Generative AI can be a game-changer for virtually every business in every industry, opening up new possibilities for innovation, efficiency and growth," said Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S. "We're committed to helping [our clients, their employees and end customers] harness the power of generative AI at scale, and Microsoft Copilot is a proven tool that can bring transformative gains, unlocking talent and potential in ways we can only imagine."