Office 365, rebranded and expanded – Computerworld

Microsoft does provide some figures around commercial adoption of M365 and O365 that offer at least a glimpse into how the suites are faring in the business world. For instance, the company announced last year that 11 million small to medium businesses are using M365, and there have been some notable enterprise customer deals in the past year or so — Microsoft pointed to oil and gas firm BP and financial services giant ING Bank as two E5 customer wins in its Q2 FY24 results, for example, while Amazon reportedly agreed to a $1 billion deal last year for one million M365 licenses over a five-year period.

Convincing customers to move to the highest E5 tier is central to Microsoft’s revenue growth plans for M365. “We see Microsoft heavily pushing E5 upon renewal to sell more security and governance and other features,” said Gartner’s Wong. “Growing revenue means moving clients to these higher-value, higher-cost bundles.”

Miller from Directions on Microsoft agreed. “Microsoft is adding new features to lots of services this year — but most require licensing a higher tier for all users than most orgs are used to or may be comfortable [with],” he said.

The number of paid Office 365 commercial seats rose 7% year on year, according to Microsoft’s Q4 FY24 financial results in August, with Office 365 commercial revenues up 13% year on year during this time. Again, it’s not clear what portion of these are O365 vs. M365 customers, or what portion are enterprise vs. small business.

It’s also possible to gauge how some of the other components of M365 are faring. The EMS installed base is up to 281 million, said Microsoft CFO Amy Hood in the Q4 investor call. And Windows 11 adoption continues to grow, accounting for around 31% of Windows desktops globally, according to StatCounter, though it’s still some way off Windows 10 adoption (65%).

Although Gartner notes business clients’ interest in other productivity suites besides Microsoft 365 — Google Workspace in particular — M365 is “a dominant player” in the market, said Wong, with an entrenched position in the enterprise, thanks in part to its legacy of on-premises Office use.

It’s not just Google, of course. Microsoft faces competition from a variety of sources: Slack, Zoom, Notion, Zoho, and a variety of others offer alternatives to M365, either rivalling individual M365 apps, or — as is increasingly the case — broadening their product sets with a view of becoming the main hub for digital work at customer organizations.

That doesn’t necessarily affect Microsoft, though — businesses will often deploy multiple tools to cater to various parts of their workforce. “Usually it’s not either/or,” said Wong. “For a lot of these tools, it’s coexistence rather than displacement.”

What are some of the newest M365 features?

The integration of Copilot across M365 apps has undoubtedly been the major focus for Microsoft in the past couple of years. It’s rare to see a product news update on the Microsoft 365 blog that doesn’t reference the AI assistant in some way.

Recent features additions include a new Team Copilot that provides AI assistance in group meetings and makes suggestions for task management; Copilot Studio for customizing Copilots in M365; access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo model; and the general availability of Microsoft’s Designer AI image generator.

Other new apps and features include Mesh immersive meetings for Teams, Places for hybrid work coordination, and a UI refresh for the Loop collaboration app.

What’s next for M365?

Whether or not Microsoft will add a new licensing tier that offers access to the various premium M365 add-ons remains to be seen. As Directions on Microsoft analysts have noted, it may be more lucrative for Microsoft to continue with its current approach. But with so many new features available outside of E5 subscriptions, it’s likely that speculation along these lines will continue.

As for M365 products, given Microsoft’s huge investment in integrating Copilot across the app suite, it seems fair to assume that the AI assistant will continue to be at the center of the company’s plans for some time. That’s despite question marks that remain over the scale of business and employee interest in Copilot for M365, the propensity for the AI assistant to hallucinate, and how businesses can deploy the AI assistant without compromising sensitive data.

“The question is: can they make Copilot the center of activity like they make Teams or Outlook the center of activity?” said Wong. “How can Copilot be the orchestrator, the starting point for organizations that want to interact with AI and genAI workloads? That will really be the key.”

A Microsoft 365 glossary

Browsing through M365 plans and add-ons turns up a bewildering list of included apps and services. Here’s a very brief guide to what the main product names mean.

Core M365 apps and services

• Word: word processing app
• Excel: spreadsheet app
• PowerPoint: presentation app
• Outlook: email, calendar, and contacts app
• OneNote: notes app
• Teams: group chat and video meeting app (not included with enterprise plans)
• OneDrive: cloud storage with versions available for both individuals and corporate users
• SharePoint: business/enterprise platform for shared content, sites, and apps
• Exchange: hosting/management service for business/enterprise email, calendar, and contacts
• Windows: desktop operating system (included only with M365 E3 and E5 plans)

Additional M365 apps and services (not included with all plans)

• Access: database creation app (Windows only)
• Bookings: appointment scheduling and management app
• Clipchamp: video editing app
• Delve: search app for M365 (will be discontinued Dec. 16, 2024)
• Forms: survey and form creation app
• Lists: spreadsheet/work tracking app
• Loop: shared workspace app
• Publisher: desktop publishing app (Windows only, will be discontinued Oct. 2026)
• Planner: work management app
• Power Apps: low-code development platform
• Power Automate: workflow automation app
• Power BI Pro: analytics and data visualization app
• Stream: enterprise video streaming and sharing platform
• Sway: publishing app for presentations, reports, newsletters
• Teams Phone: enterprise telephony service for Microsoft Teams (requires additional monthly fee per user)
• To Do: task management app
• Visio: diagram and vector graphics app
• Viva Amplify: employee communication management app
• Viva Connections: intranet app
• Viva Engage (formerly Yammer): enterprise social network app
• Viva Glint: organization-wide employee feedback/survey app
• Viva Goals: objective setting and tracking app
• Viva Insights: productivity and wellbeing analytics app
• Viva Learning: learning and development app
• Viva Pulse: self-service employee feedback app for team leads

Security and management tools (not included with all plans)

• Defender: set of enterprise security apps and services, or a security app for consumers
• Entra: set of enterprise identity and access management tools, includes Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory)
• Intune: set of enterprise endpoint management tools
• Priva: set of enterprise data privacy management tools
• Purview: set of enterprise data governance, security, risk, and compliance tools

Valerie Potter contributed to this article.

This article was originally published in May 2018 and updated in September 2024.