Microsoft’s upcoming Copilot price slash has the potential to “make AI real” for SMBs, an executive at one of its largest distributors has asserted.
When Microsoft launched Copilot for 365 in 2023, the $30 per user, per month price tag immediately raised eyebrows over its affordability for smaller customers.
At its Ignite conference this week, the vendor unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, which will be priced at $21 per user per month. Launching on 1 December, it will be available to any company with fewer than 300 users and a Microsoft 365 Business plan.
“We heard from smaller companies that they wanted a version that would fit their needs and budgets, too. So we’re making that happen,” a Microsoft representative said in a blog post on Tuesday.
The cost will effectively fall to as low as $10 if it is acquired as part of certain bundles, Nathan Marke, Chief Strategy Officer at Microsoft distributor Giacom stressed.
“We saw Google’s CEO on the BBC [earlier this week] talking about whether generative AI is a bubble,” Marke said.
“Trying to join the dots between this mega investment that’s going on out there, and how that percolates down to the two million small businesses in the UK – this is a bridge to it. This is a bridge that says, we can make this real for businesses.”
“Customer zero“
In a blog post this week, Microsoft Chief Partner Officer Nicole Dezen spoke about the need for partners to make themselves “customer zero” for AI.
Marke agreed, urging MSPs to use Copilot themselves before deploying it to customers.
“The channel has almost made a living out of selling technology to customers that we don’t use ourselves, and that’s fair enough because MSPs and resellers are different businesses from hospitals and law firms and accountants,” he said.
“But the thing about generative AI is that it applies to every single business because it deals with the business process.
“It’s really time to wake up and go, ‘if we’re going to remain relevant as MSPs into the future, and become frontier MSPs that are really helping SMBs to get on with generative AI and use this intelligent capability, we’ve got to implement it ourselves.”
Large businesses are “really getting on board” with AI, Marke said, citing RightMove’s crowd-splitting decision to boost its investment in AI and Lloyds’ launch of an AI-powered financial assistant as two proof points from this month alone.
But until now, the channel hasn’t had a “packageable and affordable” GenAI solution to drop into SMB customers, Marke said.
A worker on £25,000 would need to achieve time savings of just 20 minutes a week to achieve RoI with Copilot for 365 even before next month’s price slash, Marke stressed.
“The RoI is there. But we still haven’t seen the real take off,” he said.
“We suddenly think this might be something that makes it affordable, and that becomes very interesting,” he said.
