Microsoft expands Copilot & agents

Microsoft’s admin notices for March reference specific message‑center IDs MC1253863 and MC1253858, and the company is formalizing a “Premium vs Basic” naming scheme that ties M365 Copilot performance tiers to licensing status. (directionsonmicrosoft.com)) Microsoft will reserve “priority access” performance for paid Copilot users while “standard access” Basic users may face throttling during peak times, according to the published admin guidance. (directionsonmicrosoft.com)) Customers with more than 2,000 Microsoft 365 seats were explicitly flagged in the message center as losing Basic Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and Microsoft’s notices say those unlicensed users will no longer get the in‑app Agent Mode/advanced‑reasoning interactions or access to Anthropic models. (directionsonmicrosoft.com)) The Marketplace update on March 26 lists new offers that include AI Query (natural‑language queries with exports to Microsoft Power BI), Atmoz Cloud (real‑time cloud waste prevention that integrates with Teams), and BackPro AI (a compliance‑focused knowledge‑graph chat platform). (techcommunity.microsoft.com)) Microsoft’s Agent 365 is being framed as the enterprise control plane for AI agents, with Microsoft documentation and industry reporting indicating general availability on May 1, 2026 and a standalone Agent 365 price reported at $15 per user per month while Agent 365 is also bundled into the announced Microsoft 365 E7 Frontier Suite. (microsoft.com)) Independent licensing analyses and vendor guides quantify the budget risk: Microsoft has positioned the M365 Copilot add‑on at $30 per user per month on top of E3/E5 base licences, third‑party guides estimate true all‑in Copilot-era spend in the ~$66–$87 per user per month band depending on prerequisites, and TCO studies model Copilot license line items at roughly $360K–$1.8M annually for 1,000–5,000 users. (directionsonmicrosoft.com)) Consulting and vendor playbooks circulating now uniformly recommend concrete cost controls — targeted deployment to high‑ROI cohorts, phased rollouts, active usage auditing to find idle seats, and negotiation levers that some firms say can lower effective Copilot spend by roughly 15–40%. (copilotconsulting.com))