View Recording: Why E7? Microsoft’s New AI Platform Explained

0:0:16.92 –> 0:0:35.212 Jim “JB” Brown All right, thanks, Amy. Welcome to another webinar. This one is a scary webinar in alignment with our Halloween week here. We’re going to talk about why E7. And if I were to put another subtitle, is why is Microsoft doing this to me seminar here. 0:0:35.612 –> 0:0:54.972 Jim “JB” Brown But there definitely is a reason, and I hope it’s more treat than trick. So we’re going to spend the session talking about E7. Most organizations have moved beyond asking whether AI is important or it matters. And the conversations now are about where do we invest, how quickly to move, how do we control this thing, how do we govern it? 0:0:55.452 –> 0:0:57.292 Jim “JB” Brown East 7 brings East 5. 0:0:58.452 –> 0:0:59.212 Jim “JB” Brown Copilot. 0:1:0.172 –> 0:1:19.532 Jim “JB” Brown Agent 365 and Entra Suite together into one bundle. And, you know, the interesting question is, why is Microsoft doing this to us? You know, we’re moving from this world where AI is a personal tool to where AI, we’re working with agents that are doing things. And sometimes they do them 0:1:19.692 –> 0:1:20.652 Jim “JB” Brown by themselves. 0:1:21.612 –> 0:1:41.612 Jim “JB” Brown And they can use tools, they can access information, they have an identity, and they participate in things and processes. So that creates a different operating environment. The operating environment is changing or has changed. So the goal today is to help you understand that environment, give you a practical way to decide 0:1:41.732 –> 0:2:2.932 Jim “JB” Brown whether E7 belongs in your 2027 plan. Yes, probably does. Spoiler alert. I do not expect the answer to be the same for every organization, and certainly it’s not for everyone. So, but I do think that there’s a few questions and conversations you should be having. So by the way, today, my costume, you might not recognize it, but it’s a worried man. 0:2:3.12 –> 0:2:22.252 Jim “JB” Brown because my wife’s birthday is in two weeks, and I haven’t gone shopping yet, so that’s very scary. So now that we have Halloween out of the way. So let’s quickly slide on Concurrency. We’re A Microsoft Partner that does consulting and integrations. Our work spans the modern work. 0:2:22.572 –> 0:2:38.12 Jim “JB” Brown Azure Data and AI, which is very apropos to E7 because it crosses across everything. Our approach is people first. Technology should help people do meaningful work and be based in ROI. 0:2:39.252 –> 0:2:49.52 Jim “JB” Brown And so we work with customers to help them maximize their investment. And with that, I’d also like to say thank you to Marketing for putting this together. And with that, we’ll go into E7. 0:2:51.292 –> 0:3:7.852 Jim “JB” Brown So trick or treat, what’s in the E7 bag? So just wanted to get this sort of product scope in right away. And so it has E5 with all of the security and identity and governance and compliance along with productivity. 0:3:9.12 –> 0:3:27.852 Jim “JB” Brown And it adds Copilot. So they’re bundling Copilot and E5 together. And so for Copilot, it’s embedded in pretty much everything now. So Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and so forth. E5 did come with the free Copilot. You know, the Copilot Premium that’s embedded with. 0:3:28.252 –> 0:3:36.812 Jim “JB” Brown with E7 now, it gets you greater context and access to your business documents, goes much deeper. 0:3:37.932 –> 0:3:58.252 Jim “JB” Brown It’s also including Agent 365, which think of that as the control plane. That’s how we wrangle all of these agents and do things and provide tools and handles, if you will, that help people running agents, creating agents, governing agents. And then finally, they also added in 0:3:58.412 –> 0:4:2.572 Jim “JB” Brown Microsoft Entra Suite, which we’ll talk about why a little bit later. 0:4:3.772 –> 0:4:14.572 Jim “JB” Brown So that’s what’s in our goodie bag. And I wanted to just quickly provide a couple links to you, and I will provide these links. You can see it on the screen here for official Microsoft document. 0:4:15.772 –> 0:4:34.892 Jim “JB” Brown And so for this document, I’m going to turn my attention here to the other screen. I hope you’ve seen these before. It’s great for really just getting a Microsoft-based picture of the official truth. What is included in my license? And I’m going to concentrate on the Microsoft 365 space here. And I could see E7. 0:4:35.332 –> 0:4:57.612 Jim “JB” Brown And when I look at these columns, I can see that, oh, you know, Copilot Chat, this is the free version. It’s included in E3, E5, E7 everywhere. And so is Copilot Chat Analytics. That’s great. But Microsoft Copilot, that’s included in E7. So now they’ve bundled that together. And as I go down, I’m not going to go into every one of these, but I’ll show you how to dig into them. 0:4:58.252 –> 0:5:16.852 Jim “JB” Brown I can see the new features and things that are bundled coming from Agent 365 and other AI embedded tools across the Microsoft dashboard, if you will. I can start to see, okay, there’s a lot of security in here. 0:5:17.532 –> 0:5:36.892 Jim “JB” Brown governance, control, compliance. It’s the control plane that you’re adding with Agent 365. And so I’m going to just continue to scroll through here and you can start to see that it’s integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem. That’s the point. How do you treat an agent? 0:5:37.292 –> 0:5:39.132 Jim “JB” Brown effectively and secure it. 0:5:41.692 –> 0:5:47.772 Jim “JB” Brown And so that’s what’s in E7 or Agent 365 from a Microsoft perspective. 0:5:49.12 –> 0:6:9.292 Jim “JB” Brown So I’m going to go ahead and actually show you another tool that’s a third party tool that I really like. And it does a great job of just getting down to the nitty gritty. And so this particular tool is called M365 Maps. And I’ve selected E5 and E7 for a comparison. Just to give a shout out to the author, this is a third party tool. 0:6:9.572 –> 0:6:30.532 Jim “JB” Brown but it’s been very effective. So I would not call this the authoritative source of what’s included, but it’s a very, you know, very handy tool for navigating what’s included. So I’m going to go to this feature matrix and I’m going to unselect all and I’m going to select E5 and E7. And this is a similar journey where I walk through and I can see, okay, E5, E7, they’re the same. 0:6:30.732 –> 0:6:34.92 Jim “JB” Brown You know, I can see what’s inside that package. 0:6:35.292 –> 0:6:54.12 Jim “JB” Brown But now we get down to the nitty-gritty of what’s different. And it’s Agent 365 Suite, which is purchasable separately. And what I really like is now I can dig in to these, all these little features, some of them are big, and I can see that, oh, conditional access can now handle 0:6:54.92 –> 0:7:12.812 Jim “JB” Brown Agents, there’s specific conditional access expansion for agents, and I can even drill right into the documentation and see and start to learn more about what that is. So, I find this tool great. I’ll call it a compliment to the official Microsoft view, and again, a lot of these, this is actually… 0:7:13.132 –> 0:7:32.12 Jim “JB” Brown maybe a little bit more detail than what was on the Microsoft chart. But I can see these Agent 365 things. I can see the Entra Suite things around. And think of that about like, well, agents have these endpoints and how do I secure network-wise those endpoints and what tools do I use? 0:7:32.292 –> 0:7:33.532 Jim “JB” Brown That’s why they included that. 0:7:34.492 –> 0:7:46.252 Jim “JB” Brown And then I can see expansion to identity security and controls. And then I can see, oh, there’s Microsoft Copilot. That’s what I get embedded everywhere. 0:7:49.492 –> 0:8:3.852 Jim “JB” Brown And then I can see, oh, SharePoint with Copilot, there’s more tools now to help you organize, to validate, to make sure you’re not oversharing and all those types of things. So they’ve expanded SharePoint Advanced Management. 0:8:5.452 –> 0:8:25.612 Jim “JB” Brown So anyway, I wanted to share those two tools with you. And, you know, here are the links. They’ll be in the video after, and I could probably put them right into the chat session here. Okay, so we’ve got a product. So we’ve got this product. Microsoft has bundled this stuff together worldwide. And we’ve talked, I’ll complete that journey with you. 0:8:25.852 –> 0:8:45.532 Jim “JB” Brown It’s because we’re moving to this space where we used to just work in Excel, and I was really good in Excel. And now I’m working with Copilot for Excel to do things pretty fast and dramatic. And, you know, I’m chatting with it and I’m working with it. But now, you know, the future is going to be having 0:8:45.852 –> 0:9:4.172 Jim “JB” Brown I might have six agents, 7 agents, all with separate identities, all with separate access to things. How do you secure that? How do you control that? You know, would Microsoft have you assign a license for every agent that you create? They didn’t do that. 0:9:4.852 –> 0:9:6.12 Jim “JB” Brown What they said was… 0:9:6.972 –> 0:9:27.372 Jim “JB” Brown We’re moving to a world where we have humans working with lots of agents. So we’re going to create a control plane. And the way we’re going to license that control plane with the same security controls that you’re used to dealing with, with dashboards and everything else, is we’re going to license it as E7. And, you know, short answer, or the spoiler alert is not everybody needs E7, but for the people who 0:9:27.452 –> 0:9:41.132 Jim “JB” Brown do, it’s a great value to use the same tools you’re using for everybody else. Nice little statistic here, but I could have used any one of 100 statistics down at the bottom, you know. 0:9:42.492 –> 0:9:53.212 Jim “JB” Brown Lots of agents are coming our way. How do we secure them? How do we control them? How do we govern them? How do we, you know, flex that new muscle for operations in an environment where all those agents are present? 0:9:56.652 –> 0:10:15.852 Jim “JB” Brown So now let’s ask an optimist, I’ll say optimistic question is, hey, it worked, it’s working. Your programs for AI adoption, you’ve got people using, you know, agents, you’ve got people creating agents to do, helping people just do their 0:10:15.892 –> 0:10:36.172 Jim “JB” Brown personal productivity, but also doing workflows, you know, that really improve your business. And we have lots of use cases of those. So great. What should you be thinking about? Well, you should be thinking about all that governance and other things and coming up with a way to control it, to govern it, to be able to provide evidence for an audit. 0:10:36.412 –> 0:10:56.812 Jim “JB” Brown So, you know, what agents exist? How do you know? How do you find them? Who owns each one? You know, going back to accountability of humans in the AI world, what identities and permissions do they have? What data do they have access to? What tools? Like, there’s all sorts of tools, but e-mail, or it could be access to a database. 0:10:57.92 –> 0:11:6.172 Jim “JB” Brown through an MCP server, or it could be all sorts of different tools. What tools can they use? What are they doing? And should they still exist? 0:11:7.332 –> 0:11:12.412 Jim “JB” Brown being able to ask that question. So all those governance things. And we’ve covered a lot of those topics in previous webinars. 0:11:13.532 –> 0:11:31.212 Jim “JB” Brown And so then, you know, there’s this investment and cost associated with doing all of this. You know, do the, how do you attribute the costs to the departments or end users, or you just take it as overhead, or how do you justify the value that’s being created against the cost that’s being maintained for it? 0:11:32.292 –> 0:11:47.932 Jim “JB” Brown because you need to improve your capability, yes, that’s the focus, but also control of it, security, all those non-functional requirements that need to be handled by IT or by the business to make sure the train doesn’t go off the tracks. 0:11:49.132 –> 0:12:10.732 Jim “JB” Brown And with Agent AI, there’s, you know, workflow value engineering that’s going on, where we’re rethinking the whole workflow because we can do it differently now, better, sometimes, more efficiently. And then, you know, there’s that whole thought about freeing up resources, where you use those resources, making sure you’re mapping that out because people are valuable. 0:12:10.932 –> 0:12:13.532 Jim “JB” Brown In organizations, so. 0:12:17.132 –> 0:12:38.932 Jim “JB” Brown You know, just to complete the story on the slide, the operating environment has changed. Microsoft is providing a very practical approach to creating a control plane that allows you to use the same tool sets and actively control agents and have the tools available to monitor the process, to monitor security, to react. 0:12:39.92 –> 0:12:44.172 Jim “JB” Brown to provide evidence for audits and all those types of things, which pretty practical approach. 0:12:46.652 –> 0:13:6.972 Jim “JB” Brown So this kind of underscores sort of some of the new operational activities that are required. You need to observe, you need to see agents and understand all of those things. You also need to be able to monitor behavior and performance. Is it actually doing what we thought it was going to do because agents 0:13:7.132 –> 0:13:25.932 Jim “JB” Brown could drift. And there’s a lot of tools built into the system to do that. Governing, you know, controlling process, which is a very interesting topic because you don’t want to stop people from doing things and experimenting and actually improving productivity. 0:13:26.132 –> 0:13:46.452 Jim “JB” Brown And so, we’ve talked about creating that safe path, the, you know, the safe path to allow people to do experimentation and then monitoring what they’re doing so that their AI can graduate from personal productivity to we as a team to Agent AI in the workspace. Well, how do you actually, what tools do you actually use to do that? 0:13:46.892 –> 0:13:53.772 Jim “JB” Brown You know, that’s part of the control plane to help you manage that journey successfully. And of course, security. 0:13:55.372 –> 0:14:13.932 Jim “JB” Brown So, you know, a simple way to kind of remember what’s happening here is, you know, Copilot is very obvious. It’s been the focus now for quite a bit of time. It expands what AI can do for people and it’s embedded everywhere. Well, Agent 365 helps control that, helps improve that. 0:14:14.52 –> 0:14:25.52 Jim “JB” Brown helps enable it by giving you the tools that you need to work with it. So we’re going to transition now a little bit, and I’m just going to talk a little bit more about humans in the loop. 0:14:26.252 –> 0:14:45.132 Jim “JB” Brown And so, no, you’re not a rat. Sorry for the unfortunate placement of that rat in this diagram. But, you know, so how do you govern without slowing innovation? And this inner loop gets the focus of sort of our functional requirements. What does the AI do? 0:14:45.692 –> 0:15:5.612 Jim “JB” Brown Who’s going to handle any exceptions that occur out of how do you know that an exception actually did occur? Who’s going to be responsible for the cost of it? Who’s going to test it once in a while or all the time to make sure that it’s actually doing what it is? And so often we’re going to free up resources that can be used elsewhere in the organization, but you always need to have 0:15:6.12 –> 0:15:23.612 Jim “JB” Brown humans in the loop and they need to be trained in a framework, an operational tool set to actually execute within that loop. Great. Agent 365 provides a whole bunch of tools as well as some other things to do that. And then you’ve got this outer loop. And so the outer loop 0:15:24.812 –> 0:15:44.892 Jim “JB” Brown Yeah, it’s often handled by IT, but it could be compliance. It could be, you have a group like this already that gets together and understands how the organization is using resources or IT resources. So how do they operate? You know, their goal shouldn’t be specifically, you know, about creating agents and what it should do. It should be around 0:15:45.452 –> 0:16:5.132 Jim “JB” Brown Should that agent even exist? Should, are there duplicates? You know, I’ve got this agent over here and I’ve got that agent over here. So it should be governing the overall portfolio of agents and sifting, sorting through that, making sure that organizationally it’s embedded where it should be and 0:16:5.292 –> 0:16:25.612 Jim “JB” Brown you know, the audit and compliance and all those other things are taken care of. And so you’ve already got that outer loop and, you know, really it’s just about adding AI into it. So all of those Agent 365 tool sets help you inform both of these processes. 0:16:26.12 –> 0:16:47.692 Jim “JB” Brown You can provide logs about what’s happening. You can provide, you know, registry of agents with owners to make sure you know who and what and so forth. And so the journey now is really about mastering and having some type of governance. And you could invent a spreadsheet and create it yourself and maybe do some other things, or maybe there’s some third party tools or whatever. 0:16:48.252 –> 0:16:53.212 Jim “JB” Brown The benefit of E7 is that it’s embedded in the dashboard in the same tools that you’re using. 0:16:54.972 –> 0:17:8.892 Jim “JB” Brown So the goal is responsible progress. We want useful agents, clear ownership, appropriate controls. So now I’m going to just look back at the product again and look at pricing about the product. 0:17:10.52 –> 0:17:29.932 Jim “JB” Brown And so again, Microsoft’s approach is, you know what, we’re going to bundle this in with the user, which you then can allocate to a department based on who that user is and so forth. We’re not going to license every little bit of agent. And so, you know, the cost here, you’ve got $90 for Copilot and E5. 0:17:30.252 –> 0:17:48.972 Jim “JB” Brown You’ve got $99 for E7. So really the difference here is that $9 of value if your users are already using Copilot. And by the way, from our perspective, not every problem is solved with an agent. There’s automation, there’s lots of other tools in the bag. AI is really hot. 0:17:49.132 –> 0:18:9.132 Jim “JB” Brown And so we have lots of customers using this model right here, right now. So for that extra step up, that extra $9 per user, you add in the Agent 365 control plane and you add in Entra Suite. And I was curious about Entra Suite, so I kind of looked that up. But the reason that Entra Suite 0:18:9.292 –> 0:18:28.732 Jim “JB” Brown Entra Suite is included is because of the networking attack surface, if you will, of the Agents. And so the, you know, the Entra Suite has a couple of features around software as a service endpoints or 0:18:28.812 –> 0:18:48.572 Jim “JB” Brown endpoints where you can connect directly to an agent in the Microsoft Sasse kind of cloud world. Well, how do you secure that? You know, how do you connect to it? And there’s things like continuous adaptive access and network level isolation. 0:18:49.612 –> 0:19:8.772 Jim “JB” Brown VPNs and zero trust network access to all those agents and things. That’s why they’ve included it. I’m not going to go into the specific details. I’ve got smarter people than me that could. But that’s very interesting because it’s not just about managing and governing within M365. It’s about that outer access and protecting that. 0:19:8.892 –> 0:19:13.772 Jim “JB” Brown gap that’s been created by having all of these services available. 0:19:14.972 –> 0:19:37.372 Jim “JB” Brown And then the final thing to think about with the bundling and the pricing is, there’s no penalty for scaling agents. Sure, there’s costs associated with usage, perhaps, or maybe licensing for third party connectors or, you know, there’s probably some specific costs to certain types of agents. But for the most part, it doesn’t matter whether I have 5 agents or 25 agents. 0:19:37.772 –> 0:19:44.92 Jim “JB” Brown from a pricing standpoint. I’m licensed. I have a Copilot. I’ve got E7. I’ve got Agent 365. 0:19:46.652 –> 0:20:4.972 Jim “JB” Brown There’s a little bit of retail math here, but again, these are retail numbers. And so Microsoft said, you know, $60 for E5, $30 for Copilot, $12 for Entra Suite, not, what was the other one, $15 for Agent 365. 0:20:5.292 –> 0:20:24.132 Jim “JB” Brown We’re saving you by bundling this, you know. But I think the real value here is there’s no penalty for scaling agents with certain people, your creators and administrators. And so I think rather than licensing the agents individually or whatever, this is a good control plane way of doing it. So. 0:20:24.212 –> 0:20:27.492 Jim “JB” Brown Elling economics, if you need the capabilities. 0:20:29.732 –> 0:20:48.132 Jim “JB” Brown Just wanted to expand this just a little bit. There’s other things that are in here, connectors, APIs, all those little check boxes. So there are other value things that probably are pretty specific for specific people, but this is where Microsoft is developing A lot. 0:20:48.292 –> 0:21:1.652 Jim “JB” Brown Of new features and, you know, abilities capabilities for their customers, and so it’s developing really rapidly, you know, Agent. 0:21:2.532 –> 0:21:22.932 Jim “JB” Brown Agent 365, E7 all became GA recently. I would even say not everything within Agent 365 is GA yet. Some of it’s under preview. And so this is where all the development activity is occurring. This is where all the effort is. And they’re really trying to help by encapsulating process, keeping the same dashboard, same feel, 0:21:24.292 –> 0:21:25.652 Jim “JB” Brown So, enough, enough about that. 0:21:27.652 –> 0:21:28.292 Jim “JB” Brown All right. 0:21:32.132 –> 0:21:54.292 Jim “JB” Brown So, you know, we’re heading home here, but who should you start with? So Microsoft provides guidance, and if you’ve ever read a Microsoft licensing guide, you have, you know, less hair maybe than I do. And but they’ve been fairly good about this. You do not need it for everybody. Matter of fact, would not recommend it as tenant wide. 0:21:54.572 –> 0:22:14.692 Jim “JB” Brown Now, some organizations may make that decision strategically. That’s fine, but that’s not necessarily where you would start. Where you would start is with administrators, people who are going to operate in that outer loop that need to respond to security, need to respond to audits or whatever. And so administrators, administrators, 0:22:14.732 –> 0:22:21.492 Jim “JB” Brown you should be looking at having them have E7 and having that capability. And SecOps. 0:22:23.172 –> 0:22:38.292 Jim “JB” Brown Creators, yes, 100%. So creators who are creating agents, who own agents, who are, they could be power users, not necessarily developers, but also people in the business, because those are where the owners of agents. 0:22:39.252 –> 0:22:59.892 Jim “JB” Brown could be, should be probably, I would say. And so for those users, you would want to have them start growing and operating using E7. That would be the way to go. And then key consumers. Now, Microsoft had some mixed language here saying things like, for people who create, administer, or interact with, 0:23:1.332 –> 0:23:21.332 Jim “JB” Brown The best guidance I have for you is that, you know, there’s probably some super users or consumers out there that are going to partake in using those tools to improve their productivity and what’s going on. And so, you know, coming up with your cohort and who that would be, you know, most organizations, this is relatively new. 0:23:21.492 –> 0:23:40.452 Jim “JB” Brown are starting out by licensing a percentage of their users. And, you know, this is the lens to think about that. And it just depends on where you are in your AI adoption. So 100%, I think E7 is going to be prevalent in most organizations. And then how do you get started doing it? 0:23:40.852 –> 0:24:1.492 Jim “JB” Brown That’s up to you, but you should be thinking about administrators, creators, and then key consumers or people. And then, you know, since we’re talking about 2027 budgeting, budget for growth, because you’ve experienced how fast AI is moving and developing and the benefits are there. So as we get smarter and better, it’s just, it’s going to grow. 0:24:1.812 –> 0:24:21.92 Jim “JB” Brown So if you’re planning for 2027, you know, make a list, but then add a percentage of contingency, let’s call it, for growth. Again, not everything’s going to be solved with an agent. Not everyone needs E7, but there’s core groups that would do it. And just a quick note about this, because 0:24:21.652 –> 0:24:25.172 Jim “JB” Brown Some people don’t always think about it, but the… 0:24:27.652 –> 0:24:45.772 Jim “JB” Brown You know, Microsoft has a whole mix of licensing for you. They do not expect you to license it, you know, every user the same. So it makes sense sometimes to have E3 users, E5 users, and E7 users, as well as the frontline worker. 0:24:45.972 –> 0:25:6.932 Jim “JB” Brown licenses for people who are using iPads or tablets or whatever that might be. So you would, it’s perfectly normal to have a portfolio. Now that does create complexity, both for IT and for other people. So sometimes strategically, you might not leverage that or you might keep it as simple as possible. 0:25:7.172 –> 0:25:14.372 Jim “JB” Brown just to be able to make it manageable, fine. But 100%, not everyone should have E7 most likely. 0:25:17.492 –> 0:25:24.372 Jim “JB” Brown Okay, so we’ve talked about this, I’ve covered this, but you know, here’s five questions if you’re budgeting for 2027 and you’re thinking about E7. 0:25:25.732 –> 0:25:36.612 Jim “JB” Brown And communicating to your audience as you as you as you present the ask, is Copilot becoming an intentional way of working? Are people using it daily? 0:25:38.652 –> 0:25:42.932 Jim “JB” Brown Are multiple teams beginning to create or consume agents? 0:25:44.612 –> 0:25:51.892 Jim “JB” Brown Will agents access enterprise data, tools, or business process? Ooh, we’re crossing a line there. 0:25:53.332 –> 0:26:12.372 Jim “JB” Brown Do you need a consistent way to observe, govern, secure, and retire those agents? That’s a leading question for sure. And then can you identify work where the incremental capability has credible value case? Value case, I’m sorry, that’s a typo. You know, is it 0:26:13.492 –> 0:26:32.932 Jim “JB” Brown Is it worth it? And the answer to all of these is yes, probably. And I think most organizations are fully moved into this. And so yes, E7 definitely deserves a serious consideration. And in keeping with Halloween, it would be scary not to be budgeting and looking for this and growing in your capabilities to 0:26:33.52 –> 0:26:53.332 Jim “JB” Brown actually control these tools. So here’s my call to action. When should you start now? You know, a practical 90-day journey. If you’ve not started, you’re probably a late adopter and that’s great. So you’ve got lots of use cases of people who have successfully kind of paved the way here. 0:26:53.812 –> 0:27:13.532 Jim “JB” Brown And so for that first month, imagine a world with agents where you have a bunch of agents. How are you going to control those? What’s your security going to look like? How’s that going to fit into your compliance? Who’s going to own those things and start to get an understanding of that. And if you want help with imagination, you know, this Webinar and 0:27:13.612 –> 0:27:35.412 Jim “JB” Brown and many others, some great content are posted on our website, Concurrency.com under insights. But there’s no shortage of information here. There’s absolutely not. And, you know, experiment then. Get some people into the tool, identify the training. Microsoft has trainings free through Microsoft Learn. 0:27:35.732 –> 0:27:54.852 Jim “JB” Brown specific to these and start to map it to what you’re already doing. Because you already have security, you already have control, you already have compliance and so forth. And start that mapping exercise and start to understand what it means with a couple of use cases. 0:27:55.332 –> 0:28:15.772 Jim “JB” Brown And then decide, you know, and so from a decide standpoint, you could call this remediation or you could call it pre-planning. It just depends on when you do it. But, you know, decide who should have E7 and, you know, get some adoption there. Even if it’s a small core, it’s a capability that’s going to require a little bit of time. 0:28:15.892 –> 0:28:16.612 Jim “JB” Brown To develop. 0:28:17.852 –> 0:28:33.12 Jim “JB” Brown And so my question here is if you’re not imagining your future with AI Agents participating in the workforce as digital employees or as augmentors for your employees, you know, why not? That’s sort of the question, not why anymore. It’s why not. 0:28:34.532 –> 0:28:35.92 Jim “JB” Brown Um… 0:28:36.12 –> 0:28:54.212 Jim “JB” Brown Yeah, and you know what? There’s never going to be a time when there’s perfect clarity on this. It’s fast moving and changing. So I wouldn’t worry too much about the final destination, but begin learning and experimenting, create a safe path and doing, and then determine what your investment is for the, you know, for the next stage. 0:28:55.332 –> 0:28:55.812 Jim “JB” Brown Um… 0:28:56.932 –> 0:29:3.732 Jim “JB” Brown Okay, so I’m going to leave you with a few ideas here and show you some resources here and answer some questions. 0:29:6.372 –> 0:29:7.92 Jim “JB” Brown The. 0:29:8.532 –> 0:29:8.932 Jim “JB” Brown All right. 0:29:10.132 –> 0:29:14.852 Jim “JB” Brown appendix here. So I tried to map out for you. 0:29:16.692 –> 0:29:36.412 Jim “JB” Brown Microsoft bundle in a little bit different way because there was a question about, well, what if this is included in E5 already and what’s in E7? And you know, what is Agent 365 all by itself? Because there is an add-on where you could build this separately. And I’m sure there’s circumstances where you might do this instead. 0:29:37.892 –> 0:29:58.212 Jim “JB” Brown But you know, Copilot Chat, it’s free, included in E5 and E7. That’s immaterial to A365. There’s Microsoft 365 Copilot, the premium, that’s an add-on to E5, but it’s included in E7 and so forth. And then Work IQ, which is a think AI having access to all of your internal documentation, being able to ask questions like, 0:29:58.372 –> 0:30:3.732 Jim “JB” Brown What was that company we did business with five years ago that worked in? 0:30:5.92 –> 0:30:19.172 Jim “JB” Brown you know, potatoes or some other, you know, kind of thing. That’s an actual example where I’ve looked up and it understands. And so we’re going to create a whole different presentation on that. And so I kind of marched through the agent observability. 0:30:20.132 –> 0:30:40.452 Jim “JB” Brown and the agent governance and so forth. And so if you would like a copy of this presentation to get access to these links in PDF form, just let us know and we will send it your way. And of course, this presentation will be posted, but it’s kind of marched through all of the isms. 0:30:41.702 –> 0:30:45.782 Jim “JB” Brown Let me check some couple things here. 0:30:47.812 –> 0:30:56.132 Jim “JB” Brown And so if you have any questions for me, I might require follow-up, but please let me know. I’m going to check the session here now. 0:31:1.92 –> 0:31:1.812 Jim “JB” Brown And. 0:31:14.372 –> 0:31:33.412 Jim “JB” Brown Okay, so here’s a question. You know, does E7 provide call center or contact center? And so this is actually a layered type of conversation. E5 already has call queues, has a bunch of things you need to do to do. I would call them basic call center. 0:31:34.532 –> 0:31:54.852 Jim “JB” Brown auto attendant and so forth. And so just with E5 alone, you get that. E7 doesn’t add anything new for that. Teams Premium does add some new features and other things. And then, you know, with call center in Microsoft Teams, it does require sometimes for a complex call center, third party functionality. 0:31:54.932 –> 0:32:15.492 Jim “JB” Brown on top of the Microsoft environment. So E7 in and of itself doesn’t add call center. It’s really focused on that agent control plane. Another question was, can we upgrade and what will it cost? Like, yes, you can definitely upgrade. What will it cost? That just depends on your CSV partner, your… 0:32:15.892 –> 0:32:35.492 Jim “JB” Brown EA your agreement with Microsoft, but it’s incremental. Microsoft’s very willing to enable you to upgrade, and it’s just a matter of timing, agreement, and so forth, and we’ve talked about those new features, and so I would say that a proportion of your users, however, you know you determine. 0:32:35.572 –> 0:32:56.452 Jim “JB” Brown that would be, that would definitely be something to be pursuing. And often Microsoft, I would say always, but I can’t say that for you and your relationship, but Microsoft will say, oh, you already have E5 and Copilot. Great. You know, we’ll reduce both of those and give you E7 and make you whole and allow you to do the upgrade. So 0:32:56.932 –> 0:33:5.412 Jim “JB” Brown Those are called add-ons that have been obsoleted or are no longer needed because you’ve got them built into the upgrade bundle or package. 0:33:6.852 –> 0:33:18.452 Jim “JB” Brown When should I give users E7 versus E5? Well, for some of your users, soon. And it is a commitment to learning and expanding and doing adoption. So you want to put that into your plan. 0:33:17.972 –> 0:33:30.532 Amy Cousland Hey, Jim, if you don’t mind me quickly interrupting, I think you’re showing a very lovely picture of your family. I don’t know if you have it on it, if you’re supposed to be showing a different slide. I didn’t want to interrupt you, but somebody also pointed that out. 0:33:27.772 –> 0:33:28.532 Jim “JB” Brown Sorry about that. 0:33:31.252 –> 0:33:32.132 Jim “JB” Brown Yeah. 0:33:31.972 –> 0:33:32.212 Amy Cousland Yeah. 0:33:33.692 –> 0:33:36.132 Jim “JB” Brown What happened to PowerPoint? Oh, there it is. 0:33:35.652 –> 0:33:41.12 Amy Cousland There we go. Now you got it back. Okay. Wait, now we’re back to your family. Okay, there we go. 0:33:39.812 –> 0:33:52.452 Jim “JB” Brown Yeah. That was in Tallulah Gorge in Georgia, and it was just a surprising thing in the middle of America where you’ve got a gorge that’s like 300 feet deep and thousands of steps up and down. But 0:33:53.652 –> 0:33:54.372 Jim “JB” Brown Sorry about that. 0:33:57.252 –> 0:33:58.852 Jim “JB” Brown Back to the questions list. 0:34:0.852 –> 0:34:1.12 Jim “JB” Brown Ahh. 0:34:7.92 –> 0:34:16.932 Amy Cousland We’re back to your picture of your family, but I think I put the link in there. People can fill out the survey. You can go ahead and if you need to look at it, we’re happy to see the picture if you answer the questions. Okay. 0:34:9.732 –> 0:34:10.132 Jim “JB” Brown I know. 0:34:15.652 –> 0:34:16.52 Jim “JB” Brown Yeah. 0:34:18.52 –> 0:34:21.12 Jim “JB” Brown Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain here. Sorry about that. 0:34:25.892 –> 0:34:32.52 Jim “JB” Brown Some reason when I bring up Word, it no longer, so I’ll just show you the questions. These were questions that were asked beforehand. 0:34:34.52 –> 0:34:52.212 Jim “JB” Brown And I’ll just bring that over here. Okay. All right. So when should I give users E7 versus E5? We’ve talked a lot about that, only for those heavy into Copilot Studio, not just them, but administrators as well. And 0:34:52.252 –> 0:35:15.972 Jim “JB” Brown Maybe there’s some folks that are not developers, but could use some of the tool sets as you learn through what those are for, you know, logs or whatever those things. And then Azure AI Foundry, well, that is a choice. So Azure AI Foundry is great. It is for Agentic AI, giving you access to, I think, 13,000 models or some. 0:35:16.212 –> 0:35:36.572 Jim “JB” Brown enormous number of models. Maybe it’s 1000, but I think it’s greatly expanded because sometimes, you know, you wouldn’t use the same model for the same thing. Azure Foundry has lots of features built into it to enable you to do vision, to speech, and certainly create chat. 0:35:36.652 –> 0:35:56.692 Jim “JB” Brown but lots of agents. So that just depends. And that’s a bigger story. If you want to talk about that, we can talk about that all day long and help you kind of pinpoint in on what to use. And really, we’re going to start with, well, why? Why do you want to do that? What’s the value? What resources are going to be freed up? Why is it important? Is it because it’s faster delivery and so forth? So 0:35:59.12 –> 0:36:17.612 Jim “JB” Brown How do, how, how to manage permissions and licensing costs? Well, permissions is using the Microsoft state, and with E7, it’s, you know, there’s identities and you’re managing and assigning roles. You know, in the development environment, the development environment tends to use your… 0:36:17.732 –> 0:36:37.412 Jim “JB” Brown permissions as the developer. And then when you promote that into production, you have to sign role-based access controls, just like for any other user. It’s all auditable, and you can view those things in enter ID or in Purview and so forth. So the way you manage permissions is the same as you would for users. 0:36:38.292 –> 0:36:47.812 Jim “JB” Brown and your data. And then for licensing costs, we talked what those licensings were and the actual dollars are going to be dependent on your relationship with Microsoft. 0:36:49.12 –> 0:36:51.572 Jim “JB” Brown Costs and benefits, I think we’ve covered that pretty well. 0:36:54.452 –> 0:37:12.772 Jim “JB” Brown But I want to under score that you’ll have a consistent way of working with agents from an identity security standpoint as you do with your users. That’s a big benefit. Don’t have to learn something new. Might have to add some acumen and use it more, but you don’t have to learn something new. It’s built in. 0:37:13.692 –> 0:37:31.892 Jim “JB” Brown What Agent 365 really provides that we don’t already have with E5, the control plane. It’s about the control plane and both from usability and productivity improvement standpoint, but certainly security and management and control. And then how will it streamline work tasks for people and teams? 0:37:32.372 –> 0:37:52.292 Jim “JB” Brown That’s a big question. Starts with an ROI. We talked about it last seminar, a value kind of thinking, but you got to vision what you’re going to do and go through and develop an ROI and start to, you know, create a business case. And it involves people and 0:37:52.692 –> 0:38:12.452 Jim “JB” Brown departments and workflows. And so we do do a lot of Enablement training on Copilot. So think of that as citizen sort of developer or personal productivity. But we also do a lot around, you know, the business case developing agents. And the most interesting thing about that journey is 0:38:12.692 –> 0:38:33.612 Jim “JB” Brown taking a tool, because that’s what AI is, that’s probabilistic. And if you picture that game where you drop a puck and it hits little pins as it goes down through, and you never know where that’s going to end up, depends on how it hits or whatever, you know, we take that and we take something that’s probabilistic and drive towards a deterministic 0:38:33.892 –> 0:38:53.172 Jim “JB” Brown standpoint, whether it’s in, you know, AI Foundry, Azure Foundry, Microsoft Foundry, or if it’s in Fabric or whatever kind of tool set, you know, the goal is to get deterministic answers, whether, you know, somebody in finance asked the question or whether somebody in HR asks a similar question. 0:38:53.412 –> 0:39:4.132 Jim “JB” Brown you know, come out with results. But so we can help with that. And certainly, definitely willing to have a conversation anytime you would like about that, because that’s what we do. 0:39:5.252 –> 0:39:10.452 Jim “JB” Brown So I’m going to wrap up the presentation here. Thank you for your participation. 0:39:10.612 –> 0:39:25.652 Amy Cousland Jim, did you see the last question? It said, sorry for the repetition, but if our org has admin users with E5, M365 Premium, Copilot Studio, and Azure AI Foundry access, does E7 truly provide more? 0:39:26.452 –> 0:39:44.372 Jim “JB” Brown Yeah, it provides the control plane. And that’s the missing piece. It’s the governance and the, and we can talk about that. I will actually, I will put into the link before we close down this presentation. What’s the best way to do that, Amy? Should I create a PDF and we can send it out to people who are? 0:39:43.972 –> 0:39:49.12 Amy Cousland We’re going to send out the slides to everybody after it will be we can we send a PDF to everybody so they’ll get that. 0:39:49.252 –> 0:40:7.492 Jim “JB” Brown Great. And so I’ve given you a lot of tools to kind of look and see what Agent 365 has, because we talked about that bundle. And you know, the bundle is, you know, what do you get in our in our goodie bag here? And yeah, you have, I think you said you have E5, you have Copilot already. 0:40:8.612 –> 0:40:12.612 Jim “JB” Brown And I think, did you, what was the question again, Amy? 0:40:12.852 –> 0:40:21.652 Amy Cousland Yeah, it’s in the chat here, but sorry, it’s if they have admin users with E5, M365 Premium, Copilot Studio, and Azure AI Foundry. 0:40:23.12 –> 0:40:41.332 Jim “JB” Brown Yeah, you know, so Azure AI Foundry kind of comes with M365 and Azure, and Copilot Studio kind of comes with Copilot. And so that, yeah, no, they’re missing, you know, this Agent 365. And so, you know, that’s all those control mechanisms and governance and security and compliance. 0:40:42.452 –> 0:41:0.52 Jim “JB” Brown That’s what’s missing is how do you control it? And you know, most organizations are out there building and they’re being successful. And so, you know, kind of the thinking is your success is what’s driving now to go deeper on the non-functional things like security, governance, compliance, and whatever. And so 0:41:0.212 –> 0:41:8.212 Jim “JB” Brown That’s what’s missing. Doesn’t mean that they need it, because maybe they don’t. That would be a discussion, but… 0:41:9.412 –> 0:41:21.812 Jim “JB” Brown If they’re developers developing AI, then likely yes, that would be one of the target groups, whether they’re in the first cohort or a little bit later or whatever, that, you know, that has to be decided. 0:41:23.732 –> 0:41:25.332 Jim “JB” Brown Okay, anything else in the queue? 0:41:26.212 –> 0:41:37.92 Amy Cousland Nope, I think that’s it. Thank you, Jim and JB, so much for your presentation today. And yes, we’ll be following up with all the participants and sending a PDF of the slide deck. Okay. 0:41:36.92 –> 0:41:37.292 Jim “JB” Brown Great. Happy Halloween.