Microsoft 365 Price Increase 2025 & Windows 10 End of Support: What Your Business Needs to Know

Introductions

Austin Hampton (Pax8): As Kelly mentioned, my name’s Austin Hampton.

I am an Enterprise Productivity Solution Consultant at Pax8. That is really just a fancy way of saying I am a Microsoft licensing programs process specialist that partners with organizations like EXP to help them and their customers better navigate Microsoft licensing programs process.

This ensures that Kelly and the team are always up to date on what’s latest and greatest and what’s ultimately going to be important to you.

I communicate any changes as well as any new directions and technology that we should be thinking about.

I really just try to be an enabler for Kelly and Kelly’s team to ensure that your Microsoft licensing is delivering the most value per dollar spent humanly possible.

Pax8, as a company, is a Cloud Solution Distributor. We work with managed service providers like EXP Technical to help and enable providing a litany of all IT and customer business software.

If it is something that you guys are currently utilizing as a client from EXP and it’s part of your technology stack, we are probably one of the people providing them.

We really are here to partner with EXP and to make sure all businesses are getting the most out of all their Cloud licensing and doing as much to enable our partners and customers along the way.

Kelly Paletta (EXP): I will let the audience know too, Pax8 is a tremendous resource for technical licensing. They have a wealth of licensing experience and subject matter expertise on not just Microsoft products but a whole host of products.

What our clients might not realize is that behind the scenes, Pax8 is technical support for EXP. We depend on them for subject matter expertise, for answering questions about upcoming changes and bundling…things that we’re going to get into today.

We have our agenda posted here today.

Our agenda will be:

We’ve heard from our guest speaker presenter.

We’re going to be talking about Windows end of support,

price increases for Microsoft 365,

some license categories will fall under changes coming up.

There are security features…we’ll talk a little about security features in Microsoft 365 business premium. We’ll get down into the weeds a little bit on some of the details that might be different between one licensing level versus another.

There are other recent licensing changes that I alluded to in terms of services that are bundled and unbundled with products that you might have purchased in the past.

With that, we have heard your introduction, Austin, so thank you for graciously jumping in there.

Windows 10 End of Support

Now it’s time to say goodbye to an old friend, right?

Windows 10 reaches end of life on October 14th, 2025.

Pax8: That is correct. What that ultimately means is that as of that date, Microsoft will no longer be actively creating and publishing security patches.

If anybody in the audience is like me and you constantly get notices when a device may need an update, those are usually pushed out to either fix bugs or patch security vulnerabilities.

With Microsoft Windows 10, they are expressly stating that they are no longer creating updated security patches for this version of software. Moving forward, any exploits that are found will remain open access exploits. Therefore, it behooves us to ensure that we are aware of the Windows 10 end of life, that we are not going to be able to get security patches from that date on.

Traditionally, Microsoft provides what’s known as an “ESU,” an extended security update SKU, that can be purchased for three years. Typically, year one is $50, year two is $100, year three is $150 to provide more temporary short-term security patches for those three years as people transition hardware if it’s hardware limitations.

They are making that available, it’s just not available via the traditional Cloud solution provider CSP program, which is what Pax8 provides to EXP and Kelly and all their customers.

The biggest call to action and biggest takeaway from this is probably good to start cataloging, working with the EXP team to catalog the operating system version that we currently have on all of our corporate devices, identify those that can be upgraded to Windows 11 Pro for free because that’s just a free upgrade Microsoft made available.

Then for those that can’t due to hardware limitations, we start planning out a strategy for either acquiring ESU SKUs through volume licensing or a hardware refresh to get those devices on a secure operating system.

EXP: Austin, let me ask a naive question. If somebody has Windows 10, those computers will still work though after, we’re not saying the computer stops working, correct?

Pax8: Absolutely, good point of clarification. There is no magic date in the future that you’re going to go start your computer and it just says, “No, you don’t have the right operating system, we won’t work for you anymore.”

It has less to do with the performance of the software and more to do with the security.

Not having security patches on an operating system like Windows or any software like that is tantamount to installing additional doors and windows into your home but not installing locks on those doors, not providing a way to close access to those who should not be able to use those access points. That’s really what a security patch does.

“We found a bug in the code that allows us to do this exploit, it gets people in. Let’s change that piece in the code and we lock the door.”

That’s why it’s always important to do the updates, operating system updates when you get them on all devices because if it’s connected to the internet, it can be hacked. If it can be hacked and it’s not updated, it probably has a higher likelihood.

EXP: My understanding is that there are over a billion computers out there that…at least Windows 10 was deployed to over a billion computers at its peak. I’m confident that there are many remaining, so it’s important to act now because this can have a big impact on many small businesses.

Pax8: There’s always the opportunity of exploring virtualized Windows 365 on reduced laptops, reduced performance laptops, basically offloading our cost from buying new Windows 11 Pro full PC laptops into a more lightweight edition and then running a Windows 365 virtual machine that can run whatever version of Windows 11 Pro or Windows 11 Enterprise depending.

Always lots of options when it comes to this stuff but just good to engage with your account executive at Pax8 or your managed service provider (if you’re not an EXP customer) to have these conversations and evaluate what options are going to be best for you.

EXP: I’m troubleshooting, I think I may have a little bit better audio.

We’re back! Thank you so much. Let’s move on to the next topic. We can’t overemphasize the importance of this Windows 10 to Windows 11 transition because Windows 10 is ubiquitous. The risk that you may be exposed to in the future could be significant as the bad guys find their way in.

A computer that doesn’t have the extended security updates service available is just going to be a sitting duck, it’s vulnerable.

By the time you figure out that there’s a zero-day threat, it may already be too late.

Definitely, if you work with EXP technical, contact your primary consultant to engage on that matter direc0tly and make sure that you have a plan for all the Windows 10 computers in your environment. If you’re not an EXP technical client, we’d love to talk to you…or speak to your current IT support provider or your internal IT department. There’s still enough time to plan and not get caught unaware by this change, but it’s a big deal. There are just so many Windows 10 computers out there that it is indeed a big deal.

Microsoft 365 Price Increase

Let’s segue to the price increases and the changes on Microsoft 365.

There’s one particular category of Microsoft 365 license holders, that may see a change in their bill coming up in a couple of months. Is that correct, Austin? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Pax8: Microsoft has announced that as of April 1, 2025, any net new NCE (Microsoft “New Commerce Experience”) annual commitment, paid monthly subscription will see a 5% increase in cost compared to the baseline MSRP that we previously have seen and known.

For existing NCE annual subscriptions that are annual commit/paid monthly, this will take effect on the renewal date on or after April 1, 2025. Any annual commit/paid monthly NCE subscription renewing between now and March 31, this 5% increase will not take place until that time next year.

Any NCE annual commit subscription renewing on April 1 and beyond will see the 5% increase applied at that time and it will follow a straight 1.05 multiplier on top of the MSRP that we had previously known.

EXP: I want to jump in here, Austin, just to before people freak out. The good news for most people in attendance, if you are an EXP technical client, there was an issue that came up a couple of years ago that might have shielded you from this increase for a few months.

That was a couple of years ago, Microsoft changed to what they called the new client [commerce] experience.

At that time, most of our clients opted into an annual commitment, perhaps with monthly payments, but with a license that had a termination or a start date in February or March.

For most of you…this is just amplifying what Austin just said…if your expiration and your renewal date is at the end of February, which for many of you it is, or if it’s at the end of March, this price increase won’t affect you until after April 1, which means a year from now.

Correct me if I’m wrong, Austin, the monthly payments won’t go up after April 1, it’s the annual commitment term to that monthly payment.

Pax8: Exactly, because the way it ultimately works with Microsoft is when you have an annual commitment subscription with them, you have a contractual agreement that is promised for a set subscription with a set minimum quantity of licenses at a set price point.

If Microsoft raises or lowers or does anything to pricing during your term contractually, your terms are set on that price and therefore that new price will automatically take effect upon the renewal at which point there is a new contract at the new price point that Microsoft pushes out.

Whenever Microsoft does anything price-wise, it always follows the end of commitment terms. That’s why renewing before April 1 gives you 12 months of your current pricing, whereas renewing on April 1 and after gives the 1.05 multiplier on your current pricing.

EXP: One of the bullet points here is exploring alternative plans. A 5% increase for many organizations might not be significant, but it could be impactful.

One thing that they could do if they are subject to that 5% increase on a renewal after April 1 is they could elect to renew on an annual prepaid commitment. If you pay upfront, you’ll still pay the same price for the coming year, there’s no price increase announced. Someday there may be, but there’s not currently a price increase announced for an annual commitment paid upfront.

Pax8: Exactly.

Microsoft 365 Cost Containment Strategies

EXP: The reason why we’re hosting this webinar at this point in time in the year is we want you to have time to make these decisions. Now is the time that you can evaluate your licensing status, your subscription levels, make sure that you’re not oversubscribed.

If it’s renewal time, make sure that the number of licenses that you have matches up with the number of end users in your computing environment.

Similarly, some of our clients have a lot of seasonal staff, they may decide that it’s worth it to pay extra to have a monthly commit for some licenses. Austin, can you talk a little bit about mixing and matching of licensed terms? Is it possible if we have an annual commitment monthly payment, could we also have a handful of employees that come on board during tax season that we just buy a monthly commitment for those employees? Is that a possible scenario?

Pax8: Absolutely, you can mix and match billing terms, commitment terms. You can technically have the same subscription annual upfront, annual monthly, monthly, no issues there whatsoever.

When it comes to doing a split, the best way to identify if that is going to be a worthwhile avenue for you is—as you’re thinking about the potential user that would take a given license—that we’re evaluating annual versus monthly.

Is this user going to have a life cycle of 10 months or less?

If they get to 10 months, we may as well have just paid for an annual upfront all at once because we’ve just paid 20% times 10. Month 11 and month 12 is where Microsoft really reaps the extra money at the year level on the monthly.

If an end user is going to be in the organization for nine months or less, it makes more sense to go with a monthly license because you’re going to come in one month shy of the break-even point.

The role itself, is it seasonal or is it a high churn rate but relatively stable total number? User life cycle doesn’t matter as much if there’s always a new employee to swing that annual commit license to. I would think about it in the sense of is the role itself that the user is going to be getting this license for going to have a nine-month or less life cycle within the organization and it truly is like, yep, we spin up seasonally and we spin right back down, we do that two times a year.

EXP: Just to put some hard numbers to that as well, if we think of the annual commitment with an annual payment as sort of a baseline price and if we just use Microsoft Business Standard as an example, that baseline price would be $12.50. After April 1, if you want to do an annual commitment but pay monthly, it will be $13.13, so slightly more expensive per month.

I guess I should say the first one is $12.50 but paid annually, so $12.50 times 12. ($150.)

The second one is if you commit annually and pay monthly, you have a 5% premium which takes the price up to $13.13 per month.

And then if you make just a monthly commitment without an annual commitment and pay monthly, that’s a 20% bonus or surcharge or however you want to phrase it, accelerator, which would mean… I’m sorry, I didn’t do the math right, but that would be an additional 20% on top of that.

Pax8: So yeah, basically, if you take the 20% premium for a monthly business standard, it’s a $15 license.

If we look at business standard annual upfront, it’s 150 bucks.

So if we’re going to have this monthly business standard for 10 months (without an annual commitment), we may as well have had an annual.

We’ve spent the same amount of money. ($15 x 10 months = $150.)

If we keep it longer, Microsoft wins and no one wants that.

So if it’s nine months or less, you come out on top. You beat the annual and you beat the house edge, the 20% short-term gain that the house put up on us, lost in the long game.

Security Features in Microsoft 365 Business Premium

EXP: I wanted to take a little bit of time to dive into the differences between Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 Business Standard. Part of the reason why is: we see this often where a small business starts and maybe it’s a founder and a couple of employees.

And they know that their employees need office productivity software and they need access to email and some of the other tools that they may need.

So they start looking at Microsoft products and what do I need for my staff?

In some cases, they look at Microsoft 365 Business Basic as being a product that’s designed for small businesses, but then they decide, well, you know, this is the web and mobile app version of a lot of these office productivity tools that I know that I need.

So it’s a no-brainer that I want to upgrade or I want to buy in at a higher level to Microsoft 365 Business Standard.

What I mean is that they’re looking at services and they say, “Well, these are the services that I need. I need the desktop app for Word and Excel and PowerPoint, and I know that I need email, so it seems like this middle selection kind of fits my needs.”

But one area that they don’t consider or might not consider until down the road is that there are a host of security features at the premium level that will make their organization significantly more secure, put them in better standing to comply with regulation that they might be subject to.

We’re going to talk a little bit about some of these things, but you see a handful of tools here that you might not know what Microsoft Entra ID is, Intune, or Defender, or why you want that.

Austin, I want to turn things back to you. I’m going to borrow one of the slides that you had, but let’s talk a little bit about security features and the differences between Microsoft 365 Business Standard versus Business Premium.

I think you might want to approach it, I’m tipping your cards a little bit, but maybe from the security perspective first, working backwards towards the licensing and the costs in the other direction.

But why don’t you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on security and the features that are available or the benefits that come to an organization that might choose to deploy Microsoft 365 Business Premium?

Pax8: Absolutely, absolutely. Business Premium is, in my professional opinion, the most valuable dollar-for-dollar license you can purchase in the market across any vendor.

When you look at the value of what you’re getting within the license and how much you’re ultimately spending, the reason for that is with the current landscape, which is a big scary world out there in the digital landscape, as Kelly had mentioned at the very beginning, cybercrime is one of the biggest private industries. This is a full-time job. People hit their bonuses and their KPIs and report to their bosses about the attacks that they’ve been successful with, their breaches, and all these things.

So it’s imperative now more than ever to really harden our Microsoft environments against attackers because it’s not an if, it’s definitely a when.

If we have a business that operates on the internet, someone’s going to try to break in and wreak havoc, ransomware, exfiltrate, or just cause problems, all of which are terrible.

The way that we can think about solving the problem of safeguarding against attackers is we want to think about all of the different threat vectors, all the different ways attackers can get into our environment and do things we don’t want them to do.

To me, I break that down across some core things.

 First and foremost, identity, username, and password, your user object in your Microsoft environment, your digital identity. If someone can guess your password, if they can figure out your email and guess your password, and we have no additional security in place around that identity, they’re going to get in, bad things happen.

Entra IDP1 allows us to set up granular per-identity security policies in the form of conditional access policies that basically say, “Hey, other than username and password, what else do we need to verify is true before I believe you are who you say you are and I give you access to the Microsoft environment?”—which has all of SharePoint access, OneDrive access, Teams access, Exchange access, potentially SSO access if that’s been set up. A lot of exposure if they just guess the password. You can run a dictionary attack very cheaply where you just purchase a whole bunch of known passwords from breaches off the dark web and you just run alphabetically against an email address across multiple platforms. Office.com is always one of them until you get in.

If there’s nothing else preventing a verification or an outright block, then that’s a big problem!

Entra IDP1 conditional access policies, per-user MFA, and dynamic group policies, all these things are a lot of tools in the belt that, if applied correctly, solve generally 93% of all breaches.

It really does come down to, we got there, there wasn’t a strong MFA that was enforced. Either there wasn’t one at all or it was one that was easy to get around. We need something better than that, and that’s just kind of a new security default.

Additionally, within Business Premium, we get Intune, which provides endpoint management, mobile device management, and mobile application management.

What this does is it allows Kelly and their team or your IT team, whoever is working with you and managing devices and software, making sure the right people have the right things.

This gives them a tool to manage these devices, push out operating systems, push out applications, push out security updates, patch vulnerabilities, all from afar without even having to come in hands-on keyboard contact with the device. It’s a lot nicer than walking over to the IT room, dropping off your laptop, coming back Monday morning. It just happens while it’s connected to the internet. They do it completely for you remotely.

With corporate-owned mobile devices, same thing! No-touch deployment, remote factory wipe, set assigned to different people, and even geolocate if it is an Android device.

With mobile application management, this is where we can allow our IT team to set up some basic security policies that are applied not to the phone, the personal phones, the personal devices of your employees, but to the individual applications that are gateways to your company’s data, i.e., Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, anything that if I can get this device, click that app, and see maybe things I shouldn’t see as a random person, we’re going to put behind a biometric or six-digit pin. If nothing else, it’s another checkbox towards our cyber insurance, showing that we are actively safeguarding against our threat vector of identity. We’re actively safeguarding against the threat vectors of corporate devices, mobile devices, personal devices.

EXP: Austin, thank you for mentioning cyber insurance. I’m sorry to interrupt here.

Pax8: No, you’re good.

EXP: For many small businesses, that is the bottom line. If you want cyber insurance, you need to have certain controls in place. Similarly, if you work in an industry that is subject to any sort of regulation, whether it means you’re in the defense industrial base (DIB), if you’re a healthcare provider, if you work in financial services, in all of those industries, you’re required by regulation to have certain security controls in place.

Austin is speaking to exactly those things…the ability to remotely wipe a device, to get your company data off of that device without having to wait for an employee to come back to the office and hand that device to you. Data loss prevention, controls that protect, that include link wrapping and open applications in a sandbox and other protections that again, not just protect your organization, which they need to, but additionally are the minimum requirements for a cyber insurance policy.

They are the stated requirements for just about any form of regulation. I didn’t mean to get off track there, but it’s such a big point that it’s almost, that’s the one that flips the switch for nearly everyone, is that you just, you have to do it in many cases.

Pax8:  Again, it really, to me, it comes down to there are a handful of different ways for attackers to try to gain entry. There is the identity point, so we want an identity security solution. There is the lost and stolen device point, so we want an endpoint management device management solution. There is the inbox, they are going to phish you and spear phish you and send you things that have malware and macros. We want anti-phishing, anti-spam, safe link, safe attachment. We want stuff that’s looking at what we’re getting and saying, “Hey, is this okay? It’s safe.” If there’s a link in an attachment, we want Microsoft to, in a sandbox, detonate it when it comes in, but it also does it again, like in zero-click, when we actually click the link. It gives Microsoft an additional chance in the event that it is actually malicious to try to detonate the sandbox again and route if necessary. If anything is ever actually detected with zero-day auto-purge, it can be one-click removed from all users.

Say it was a mass “spray and pray” across an entire org because everybody’s on LinkedIn and it’s not hard to write a basic Python crawler script that pulls user first names, last names, email addresses off of LinkedIn.

If you got one of them, you can guess the rest if you got first name, last name. That’s important. You also want to make sure that you have an endpoint detection and response, automated investigation, remediation solution on the PC itself, acting as your last line of defense, an immune system that everything in here should be safe and good, but I’m going to watch everything very carefully and skeptically. If it even so much as looks like it could be for an attacker, I’m going to immediately isolate you, notify, and try to quarantine, kill you, much like your immune system does.

Exactly.

Then on top of all that, we get email encryption, which allows us to ensure anything we want to encrypt and send, we can do so in a safe, compliant way.

Then we can take advantage of data loss prevention policies through Azure Information Protection, through sensitivity labels.

Price Considerations for Microsoft 365 Business Premium

All of this, if we wanted to do independently and we just bought the individual add-ons, the prices are listed there. This is $21 of all our add-ons and a $22 license ($43 total).

If we just went to buy these, Microsoft is basically saying, “Hey, we’ll give you email and applications and Teams and SharePoint for a dollar,” which is another way…

EXP: Forgive me again for interrupting, another way to look at it is if you’re at the business standard licensing right now and you’re paying $12.50 per month, this is a $9.50, $10 upgrade to get $21 more products.

But again, it’s not just a financial decision. These tools are necessary to meet the requirements of your insurance carrier, your external regulators, and they are widely accepted as best practices. Things like MFA stop such a high percentage of attacks that everyone everywhere would recommend that among their top recommendations. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt there, Austin…

Pax8: No, no, no, you’re all good.

Just kind of like final thought on that is I view these as the new security defaults to just operate safely on the internet as a business. They’re not mandated by any means, but heavily encouraged, very, very heavily encouraged because they do just solve, it’s the one way to ensure all of our minimum effective dose, not going overkill, all bases are covered.

If we tried to do this even outside of Microsoft, just with independent third parties such as an Atty or Mass 360 for device management, an Okta or Duo for authentication in MFA, a Proofpoint, an IronScales for email, a CrowdStrike or a SentinelOne or a Bitdefender for endpoint, you’re going to be north of 22 bucks and we haven’t even touched an inbox or any type of productivity applications or internal collaboration or meeting hosts.

When comparing that to this, it’s just, I call it the $5 footlong of it.

It’s so valuable for what you’re actually spending. The next closest license in value dollar-for-dollar wise is the E5 because if you need everything in the E5, you’re actually getting a screaming deal. If you don’t, it’s not worth it, but there’s a massive jump between those two and that’s intentional.

EXP: I want to hearken back to some of our previous webinars. We’ve had guest speakers like Barrett Adams-Simmons, who is the Deputy Regional Director from CISA, and these things that we’re talking about were among her top recommendations of controls and protections that you need to put in place to protect your small business or nonprofit.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium Feature Matrix

This next slide was one that I had prepared. The previous one was one of Austin’s, but this speaks to the same point. I don’t expect you to read every block here. This is just a matrix that we sometimes use internally to evaluate the differences between products and the hidden features in Microsoft 365 Business Premium are all of these security controls, which are in this segment here, security and endpoint management tools.

We’re going to segue into the next. We’ll move forward through that. These were some of the reiterations. There are other recent licensing changes as well. I’m going to put you on the spot with some of these, Austin, and we’ll test your knowledge or your command of licensing and changes.

Microsoft 365 Changes to Product Bundles

I heard about an unbundling of Teams from some of the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 E3 Enterprise licenses. E3 and E5 licenses. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Should a current Microsoft Office E3 user be concerned about this? And tell us a little bit about the unbundling too.

Pax8: First and foremost, if we have any Office 365 E1, E3, E5, or Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 subscriptions that include Teams natively (i.e., they were purchased prior to the forced decoupling from net new, which was October 1st, 2024), any Enterprise class license purchased before October 1st has Teams included.

As long as you do not cancel that subscription, you will be able to renew, add quantity, and continue benefiting from Teams being included in perpetuity, barring Microsoft making a public declaration materially changing their current public policy and stance as it is today.

So, I would not be worried about it if we are existing customers that have those licenses that include Teams. Unless we are a customer that has those existing licenses that include Teams and are going to be purchasing across different Microsoft purchasing channels requiring a net new order of that same license from a new provider under a new purchasing channel, that will force the move to no Teams and a cancellation of the licensing from the current purchasing channel.

EXP: The good news is that some people might be hearing that Microsoft Office E3 no longer includes Teams. For most of our clients that are already using that product, they will not be affected by this. They are part of a legacy group that will, at least for the time being, continue to have access at the same price. Those products will not be unbundled (for them).

So, the conclusion here is that if you’re already using these products, you’re safe. For those that are net new, if you’re changing channel providers or if you’re a new business migrating to this product, you’ll be affected. But for those folks, it’s new information anyway. So, this is kind of a dodged bullet for most people. They may read about it online, but for everyone that’s already using this product, you won’t be affected by this unbundling.

Pax8: Yes, there is no impending date of doom in the future in which Microsoft is going to rip Teams from your licensing entitlements. They’re not really in a position where they would be incentivized or want to do that. By unbundling, they do end up making a little bit more money, but that does not appear to be the motive behind this. It really has to do with Microsoft getting hit with some pretty serious antitrust litigation in the EU. To be compliant in the EU, they broke Teams out of the Enterprise class licenses. Then, on April 1 of last year, they announced that moving forward, Teams was being decoupled.

Honestly, I think we can all agree that maybe scheduling it for April 1 was not the best idea. It’s just like, “Hey, no news today. I don’t believe anything or anybody until the second or 31st.”

They made this move to signal to the US, “Hey, we’re doing what we did in the EU here unprompted. We’re not a monopoly, don’t break us up.” That’s why I don’t think anybody has to worry about Microsoft ripping it out because they didn’t really want to do this in the first place. It was a decision they made to not get potentially hit later on.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Pricing/Purchasing Options

EXP: Got it. Okay, so let’s move on. There’s also some good news. Austin, you joined us a little over a year ago when Copilot was brand new.

In fact, then it was a sneak peek at Copilot because that’s one of the things that I know you’re passionate about. In fact, I’m going to take a little pause to say if you are not following Austin Hampton on LinkedIn, you should. He regularly, irregularly, I don’t think it’s a set schedule, but often posts information about how to make the best use of AI in general and Copilot in particular.

Do you have anything more to say about that passion for AI?

Pax8: Yeah, so one, I try to post a video about one to three times a week. I’m not always super consistent week to week, but on average, one to three videos a week. I’m really just trying to share interesting thoughts, little tips, and tricks around Copilot, generative AI, or responses to some things that might be happening in the market, some common misconceptions, some big questions that I can lend my insight to help answer.

My passion around Copilot comes from always being somebody that was kind of obsessed with collecting skill sets and hobbies and never becoming a true world-class master at any of them but always getting to a very proficient level. Not necessarily getting bored and moving on, but just moving beyond a certain wall into an elite level that requires lifelong dedication. That’s always been a thing about me.

Part of my passion for AI is with this technology, we have at our fingertips the ability to leverage a tool that allows us to manufacture skill sets and expertise out of thin air. To be able to move through the world, through tasks, through challenges, overcoming skill deficits, to be able to do things that you were not previously fully capable of doing, which to me is just a magical and transformational power.

I have really taken an interest in that but also in helping others, like my partners and their customers, see the transformational power of this tool and most importantly, understand ways in which they can harness it.

EXP Indeed, it’s a valuable resource. If you’re not following Austin, you should be. He shares a lot of valuable insights.

The good news about Copilot is that when it was first released and available, folks who wanted access to it had to make an annual commitment and an annual payment. That’s changed now, right?

Pax8: Absolutely. It is still only available as an annual commitment, but Microsoft has finally made it available as a monthly payment schedule.

So it’s no longer a $360 per user upfront fee; it is now $31.10 paid monthly. Because that was actually the very first SKU that they launched, they were like, “Yeah, we’re doing the 5% increase for the monthly pay on April for everything, but this we’re going to do now just to give you a taste of what this is going to look like.”

So it’s not a straight $30; it’s $31,10 for the 5% increase. But that’s now available, and we can now start operationalizing the cost of the Copilot licenses. We’re still going to spend the same amount at the end of the year, but I do find that operationalizing the cost helps rationalize a ramp-up period of value creation and value extraction, as opposed to, “We bought 10 licenses, we spent $3,000, we expect $3,000 to $6,000 of savings in value on day one,” which can have an impact.

Comments, Questions, and Answers

EXP: Yeah, so I want to move on quickly. We’re running short on time here, and I want to move to questions in just a minute.

But I want to speak to a comment that came in as well.

One of the comments that came in was, “Well, it’s a lot to figure out. How do I figure this out on my own? I don’t have the patience as an end user or as a business leader to become an expert on all of this. I just want somebody to tell me or make some recommendations.”

In fact, that’s what EXP Technical is here to do. We try to avoid sales pitches in these sessions, but we do want to let you know that the reason why we’re here is to help you make these decisions.

Ultimately, it’s your choice and your decision, but work with your primary consultant from EXP Technical to review your current licensing levels, review the security controls that are in place, compare that against the regulation that your organization is exposed to, the threat landscape, and other factors that might impact which product you choose, which payment structure you choose, and what is the most cost-effective solution.

This information is for those who want to dive into it, but EXP Technical, with the assistance of Pax8, is available to guide you through these decisions as well. This is our conclusion here.

Now I’m going to segue into Q&A, but I’m also going to stop sharing as I jump back into the slides here.

There is something coming up in the future that we want to let everyone know about. If you’ve attended this series before, you know that we try to bring in speakers who have valuable insights and can share unique perspectives with the business community.

One of the things that is challenging and sometimes a little bit frustrating or concerning for me is that these events draw a large audience, anywhere from 40 to 200 people register and attend these events, and we have a million-dollar mastermind group in this audience, but nobody knows who else is in this session.

One of the things that EXP Technical is working towards is periodically having in-person sessions as well. The long-term plan is one where we may have a half-day or maybe even a full day where we bring in keynote speakers from all over the world to speak to you about cybersecurity and operational efficiency.

In the short term, there is a session coming up just two weeks from now, and I’ll share the registration information in just a minute.

There’s a session coming up two weeks from now that will be in person, and it happens in Downtown Bellevue on March 5th from 11:30 to 1:30 p.m.

It’s a lunch and learn session.

We will buy you lunch, we’ll pay for your lunch, and speaking at that event are speakers from Alliance, which is, I hope I got that right, I’ll pull up the slide in a second here, a cyber insurance provider. It will be Chris Brumfield speaking on cyber insurance.

Terry Polyak from Insperity will be speaking about HR and operations with a cybersecurity perspective, Tony Lesirge from EXP Technical presenting at that event, and those of you who know Tony know that he’s a rock star. I’ll be speaking briefly as well.

And while Austin addresses the first question here, I’m going to dig and pull up the information for registration for that as well.

One question that came up is, there’s a few here, and please keep submitting your questions, but one is, “Can we avoid these price increases by renewing early? Can we make that change, can we make that selection, and perhaps renew an April renewal in March? Is that an option?”

Pax8: I wish! Unfortunately not. The renewal structure with Microsoft is, if you are in an annual commitment paid monthly, you are in that commitment until the commitment term end date, at which point the subscription automatically renews. There isn’t any way to execute a renewal early. You could purchase the same license early, but that would just now we’re having an overlap. So unfortunately, that would not be really an option.

EXP: Another question that came in, and please keep these questions coming, “Do these changes impact… or how do they affect nonprofit pricing?” Are there other categories that are or are not affected by these price increases?

Pax8: This is NCE specific, not special qualification specific or lack thereof.

So this annual commitment paid monthly 5% increase will be applied across all Microsoft classifications. So commercial NCE, commercial NCE nonprofit, NCE GCC, NCE EDU will all see the same 5% increase upon their existing subscriptions renewal on or after April 1, 2025.

EXP: Okay, got it. You know, there are a couple of other questions that we might want to take offline. I will voice them, and you can speak to them, Austin, but they sound like specific use cases. “Can we use…,” this is one pretty general, but there may be specifics that are concerns, “Can we use Microsoft Defender along with other endpoint protection software before we deprecate the software for full Defender commitment?”

Pax8: You wouldn’t want to run two endpoints on the same, two endpoint security solutions on the same device. It’s very similar to running two immune systems in the same body. They will fight each other as opposed to just fighting what is potentially out there because they will technically, to the endpoint detection response, if it’s not one of the cataloged applications, it’s foreign, and another endpoint is not going to be a catalogable application, and therefore it’s going to be found as foreign.

So really, when you’re evaluating, you want to set up a test device that you put the Defender for Business or Defender for Endpoint solution on and do your testing isolated from a live user device and maybe just use that device isolated a little bit, but then just go click on every single link and banner possible.

Just do the equivalency of licking lampposts and door handles to see how strong your immune system is. I won’t recommend that in the real world, but do some type of testing in an isolated way before deciding to make a change and then rolling out the new endpoint in a phased approach. But yeah, I wouldn’t ever recommend having both on the endpoint at the same time.

EXP: Got it. And you know, this may be somewhat specific, but here’s one, there’s two questions from the same attendee today. “My E5 goes from MLSA to MCE in March. Will this rip Teams out of my licensing structure? Will I need to add a new license to each user individually?” Maybe after this session, we’ll follow up on that one. I see the gears turning.

Pax8: They are. MLSA is a different billing account, and I don’t believe there’s a way to transition. So the answer to that depends on if by the time your E5 transitions from MLSA to MCA and that impending date is, if they’re just transitioning the subscription as it is to the Microsoft Customer Agreement billing account type without canceling your existing subscription versus we are automatically purchasing an MCA E5 as net new, which will not have Teams, and followed by canceling your MLSA E5. That would be the only way in which you would lose Teams because, again, the biggest thing is if you have a license that includes Teams and it is able to renew, has not been discontinued from renewal, and that has not been any NCE licensing, provided you don’t cancel it, you’ll always be able to keep it.

And so with the MLSA to MCA, because that would only ever be a Microsoft direct only thing, I don’t have insight into the backend mechanics and how that would actually transition. I can just kind of give you the two hypotheticals. It would be one of the two that either just updates your billing account type on that and you’re fine, or it replaces it with a new version that doesn’t have Teams, and we’re less fine.

EXP: Got it. It turns into an issue of is this net new or not, and there may be some ways it sounds like this may be kind of an edge case that we need to investigate to be sure that we’re giving correct information. I do want to, we’re just about to wrap up, we’re running short on time here.

I did want to share a little bit of information again about our upcoming presentation.

Thank you for your patience with my audio issues. Hey, fun fact, if your headset is trying to pair with two computers that are in the same webinar at the same time, it goes a little haywire, and it didn’t do that in our prep session, so I learned something new today!

Our next event happens Wednesday, March 5, 2025, from 11:30 to 1:30 p.m., and as I mentioned, it is an in-person event.

You get value from the presenters and also from chatting with the person next to you and learning from the other people that are in the room.

It happens at the Bellevue Place Hyatt Regency Downtown Bellevue.

If you are at all interested, I would encourage you right now, pull out your cell phone, scan this QR code, and enroll in this session. We need to know who’s planning to attend so that we can have enough space in the room and so we can order enough lunches. It is a lunch and learn session. We will provide lunches for everyone in attendance, and you can see the panelists that I mentioned before.

So Austin, I think we’re butting up against time here. I want to thank you so much for joining us.

For folks that are in attendance, one more time, thank you so much for your patience with the audio issues and for bearing with us on that.

There has been a recording made of this session. We will make that available for people in attendance and for those that registered and weren’t able to attend. It may take me a few days to get that out to you, so be patient with that.

Any closing words, Austin? We’ve got 30 seconds or so.

Pax8: Thank you guys so very much for coming and attending this and listening to us. Appreciate your attention. I know this time on a Thursday, an hour is a lot to ask. I appreciate you giving that to us here, and hopefully we shared some valuable insight with you. Just make sure to let your folks over at EXP know if there’s anything that we can do to help, if we brought maybe something that we weren’t aware of to the forefront that we now want to get resolved or looked at or talked about.

EXP: Got it. Yeah, connect with EXP, and we’ll help you through those sticky issues and the questions about renewals and price increases and licensing levels.

Thanks again, Austin. Thanks everyone for joining us, and with that, we’ll call it a day here. Thanks again, and have a great day, everyone.