As organisations mature their AI strategy, the focus is moving beyond experimentation to the strategic integration of AI into key business workflows at scale. This means embedding AI features into the everyday tools users rely on, harnessing its power in day-to-day tasks and actions, and housing AI closer to where business data lives to provide real-world context and intelligence from within your organisation.
The creation of AI agents as focused “digital workers” is also a key part of this shift. But while the potential to simplify workstreams and offload repetitive actions is attractive, the ongoing management and governance of agents creates new identity and administration challenges.
It’s for this reason that Microsoft has released the new Microsoft 365 E7 license, which enters general availability today. Dubbed as “The Frontier Suite”, this new licensing tier (the highest Microsoft 365 tier available) unites core productivity software, AI capabilities, and enterprise security into a single license that streamlines AI adoption and better enables effective governance of AI agents across the organisation.
What’s included with Microsoft 365 E7?
- Microsoft 365 E5 forms the base, providing the core productivity, security, identity, and compliance foundation that organisations already rely on to work securely at enterprise scale. For organisations that don’t currently utilise an E5 license, moving to M365 E7 represents a powerful upgrade that introduces a valuable portfolio of additional Microsoft tools.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot adds AI capabilities directly into everyday work experiences. Sitting inside the tools your teams already use every day, it helps users reason, create, and act with context from your organisation’s data. Microsoft Copilot has also recently been upgraded with new functionalities, including the ability to use Anthropic’s Claude models within the platform.
- Microsoft Entra Suite extends identity and access controls to users, apps, and importantly agents. This means secure access, conditional controls, and least-privilege governance across your entire environment.
- Agent 365 delivers centralised governance, visibility, and control for agentic AI platforms. This addresses a growing governance gap many organisations face as they deploy AI agents across key workflows, allowing for effective compliance and security monitoring across the organisation, orchestrated by internal teams, or an external Microsoft partner.
With a consolidated pricing structure, an E7 license offers genuine value when compared against the deployment of individual Microsoft components alongside an existing E5 license, while helping organisations more easily upscale features and AI capabilities.
Crucially, E7 should be seen as a standalone licence option rather than simply a step up from E5. With the integration of additional tools and capabilities, it’s Microsoft’s first AI-driven M365 licence tier, shifting AI from a tool that supports individual workers to an organisation-wide capability that acts across systems and processes.
For some, particularly those who have not yet reached the right level of AI maturity, the option of continuing with E5 and extending with additional capability maybe the best short-term approach, as part of a medium to long-term strategy that grows maturity with a view to future E7 deployment.
What is Agent 365, and how does it work with E7?
As agentic AI moves from experimental to operational, effective governance becomes critical. Microsoft-sponsored research from IDC predicts that 1.3 billion agents will be in circulation by 2028. But the transformation enabled by agentic AI also carries new risks. Without proper guardrails in place, rapid deployment of new agents can lead to blind spots, diminished ROI, and real security risks.
It’s for this reason that Agent 365 has been released alongside, and included in, Microsoft 365 E7. A key component of the new license tier, Agent 365 gives IT and security leaders a single place to observe, govern, manage, and secure agents across the organisation. It works alongside existing Microsoft tools for managing users, like Microsoft Admin Centre and the Microsoft Entra Suite, extending management and governance capability within the confines of familiar platforms as part of a more seamless experience.
Agent 365 makes it easier for businesses to take the next step on the AI journey with the shift to agentic deployments, ensuring they can be effectively controlled and managed as genuine ‘digital workers’ alongside human employees. We’ve seen the benefits agentic AI can provide first-hand, as a long-standing Microsoft partner and through our creation of a bespoke agent for handling request-for-proposal (RFP) responses that’s helped one of our customers save over 400 days per year.
What this means for your AI strategy
Microsoft 365 E7 gives you a path to scale AI confidently across your organisation. The inclusion of Agent 365 means you can extend from AI-assisted productivity into agentic workflows, with governance built in from the start.
With Microsoft 365 Copilot included in the license, users get immediate access to AI across the entirety of the Microsoft productivity suite, building on Microsoft’s Work IQ layer to deliver immediate context from the wider business. Work IQ also integrates into agents deployed within the Microsoft environment and managed with Agent 365, ensuring a consistent user experience between Copilot and bespoke agents.
This allows for a more comprehensive approach to AI, with Copilot providing more generalist support to users across day-to-day workflows, while dedicated agents extend this to provide specific assistance with more structured, technical workflows.
This is the approach we’ve adopted as part of our own AI strategy, enabling users with Copilot first as a generalist tool, then developing bespoke agents for specific workflows. To date, we have a 98% internal adoption rate for Copilot and have built a wide range of agents to support different teams, alongside a number we have subsequently deployed for customers.
What to do next
Whatever the makeup of your existing Microsoft license estate, E7 offers the ideal platform to elevate and evolve your AI strategy. If you’re interested in getting started, get in touch with our team today. As an experienced Microsoft partner, our experts can help you assess your current license estate, review your AI maturity, and help you make informed decisions about how best to deploy Microsoft 365 E7 across your organisation.
