M365 News for August
Can Microsoft turn a profit on all this AI Investment?
The stock market is dropping like a rock, eh? I’m not a stock market expert, and I know that there’s a lot more going on outside of the tech sector than inside, but it looks like more than a few people are starting to ask this question.
Chief among them is Ed Zitron, who has been talking about AI as a bubble for a while:
In essence, Microsoft spent $19 billion in the last quarter on cloud and AI expenses, and has made it clear that it’s not done spending more money than it’s ever spent before on a technology that neither makes Microsoft nor the people using it that much money.
To put that in perspective, Copilot for M365 costs $360 per year per user.
To make up for the money invested in the last quarter, they’ll need over 500 million Copilot subscribers this year. There are not 500 million paid M365 subscribers.
Corrected - they would need over 50 million Copilot for 365 subscribers this year to cover the investment of one quarter. (Darn decimals!) Still, there aren’t unlimited subscribers to cover these large ongoing investments, so the following sentence still holds:
They will need much larger revenue plays, and it’s unclear what those will be. Wall Street seems to be concerned, and maybe they should be.
See also:
In other Copilot news:
Here’s an interesting resource for folks just starting -
This is good news - The Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is now included with Copilot for Microsoft 365
Also - Copilot for Microsoft 365 Is Not Just Another Chatbot
Finally, this is something to look forward to - Microsoft Copilot Will Get Video-Creation Capabilities
I also came across a bunch of good stuff this month that wasn’t about AI:
Greg Buckles created First Steps to Leveraging Purview eDiscovery, and Joanne Klein created Microsoft Purview RACI charts.
Speaking of Purview, I noticed today that Purview defaulted to the “new” interface, so we should all get used to that.
And get used to some new stuff - Microsoft Purview Data Governance will be generally available September 1, 2024
Purview can also help with AI compliance outside of M365 - Microsoft Purview integrates with ChatGPT Enterprise Compliance API to support compliance.
Have you ever wondered about OneDrive when it comes to departing employees? It’s easy to overlook, so consider this - Delete OneDrive for Business Accounts Can be Tricky.
This may become more complicated when Microsoft starts archiving OneDrive accounts to its own archive solution and charging for storage in Azure. It’s inexpensive, but you might want to know what’s happening. - Microsoft to Charge to Archive Unlicensed OneDrive Sites. (This is why we all follow Tony Redmond, by the way.)
Speaking of OneDrive:
And, if you’re equally confused by Loop - Microsoft Loop | Live, Five-Part Learning Series.
That’s all the news I’ve got this month. I’ll be back next week with some testing around something I was recently reminded of. I had worked through it with a client years ago and wondered if it still created the same problem.
We’ll find out.