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Microsoft 365 E7 unveiled: biggest licensing change in ten years

Microsoft 365 E7 unveiled: biggest licensing change in ten years

Microsoft has confirmed to Techzine that it will be launching the Microsoft 365 E7 Frontier Worker Suite on May 1. The package consists of Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Agent 365. It is the biggest release since Microsoft 365 E5, which came out in 2015. The new suite will cost $99 per user per month.

Microsoft 365 E5 is currently the most comprehensive option offered by the tech giant. It includes all the familiar Office tools, advanced security tools, and Power BI Pro. Microsoft 365 E7 will further expand the package by including Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365. The latter has been available on a limited basis until now but will become generally available at the same time as the new license.

Microsoft 365 E7 will be further enhanced with Microsoft Entra Suite and advanced security features from Defender, Intune, and Purview. According to Microsoft, paid use of Copilot has grown by more than 160 percent year-on-year, while daily active use has increased tenfold. Users are therefore more interested in a single solution rather than purchasing multiple tools separately. An E7 license is cheaper than purchasing all the tools separately.

Vergelijkingstabel met functies en apps in Microsoft 365 E7-, E5-, Extra Suite-, Copilot- en E3-plannen, ingedeeld in categorieën zoals productiviteit, beveiliging, compliance en AI.

Collaboration with Anthropic

In addition, Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot will be released, shifting the focus from assistance to what the company calls “embedded agentic capabilities.” These are features that actually perform tasks rather than just providing advice. A notable addition is Copilot Cowork, developed in close collaboration with Anthropic. Cowork can handle long-term, multi-step processes. Think of preparing for a customer meeting: one request is all it takes, after which Cowork builds the presentation, collects financial data, emails team members, and schedules time for preparation.

Expansion of Copilot and Agent 365

Cowork is currently being tested with a select group of customers and will be available in March as a research preview through the Frontier program. At the same time, Microsoft is also rolling out the new agentic features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook this month, previously announced as Agent Mode. Wave 2 introduced the first Copilot Agents in September 2024, and Wave 3 goes further by fully integrating Copilot into existing workflows.

Microsoft emphasizes that Copilot has been deliberately designed to be model-diverse. Claude is available today in the regular Copilot Chat via the Frontier program, alongside the latest generation of OpenAI models. Microsoft 365 Copilot already features the Researcher and Analyst agents, powered by OpenAI reasoning models.

Agent 365 will be generally available as of May 1, 2026. The platform acts as a control panel for AI agents in organizations: IT and security teams get a single central location to oversee, manage, and secure agents. The price is $15 per user per month. Microsoft uses Agent 365 internally as ‘Customer Zero’ and has now mapped more than 500,000 agents within its own company. Over the past 28 days, those agents generated more than 65,000 responses per day for employees. In the preview phase, tens of millions of agents have already been registered in the Agent 365 Registry.