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Microsoft
Microsoft’s new AI Frontier Suite explained
23 Mar 2026
8 min read
AI tools are becoming common in most organisations. Teams are experimenting with tools like Microsoft Copilot, testing new workflows, and starting to see where AI could genuinely save time and unlock insight.
The challenge now is scaling what works.
How do you move from a handful of promising use cases to something that works securely and reliably across the whole organisation? How do you manage growing numbers of AI agents? And how do you make sure AI delivers real business value rather than becoming another tool that never quite moves beyond the pilot stage?
Available generally from 1 May 2026, Microsoft 365 E7 is designed to help organisations move from AI experimentation to enterprise-scale execution, bringing productivity, AI, security and governance together in a single platform.
What is Microsoft 365 E7? In simple terms, E7 gives organisations the platform they need to deploy AI and agents at scale, with the governance and security required to make it work in the real world.
Microsoft 365 E7 is a new enterprise suite designed for Frontier Firms. It combines Microsoft’s productivity, security and AI technologies into one integrated platform to streamline management and enhance oversight of AI agents, and bolster protections.
At its core, E7 unifies:
By bringing these capabilities together, Microsoft has created a platform that means AI can operate inside the flow of everyday work while remaining secure, governed and observable. So instead of stitching together separate licences for AI, identity, security and governance, organisations can buy a single, enterprise-ready AI platform.
Microsoft describes the next phase of AI adoption as the rise of the Frontier Firm. These organisations move beyond using AI to simply improve productivity, and start redesigning how intelligence shows up across their organisation.
Broadly speaking, Frontier Firms are:
In this model, AI doesn’t sit alongside work as another tool – it becomes part of how work gets done. Read more about Frontier Firms here.
But for this model to succeed, organisations need two critical foundations: intelligence, and trust. Intelligence comes from understanding the context of work. Trust comes from ensuring AI systems are secure, governed and compliant. Microsoft 365 E7 is designed to deliver both.
The launch of E7 is about more than just delivering a simplified licence – it signals a shift in how enterprise AI will be deployed in the age of the Frontier Firm. This shift is important for three key reasons.
No longer just a tool for mundane side tasks, AI agents are rapidly becoming capable of performing complex tasks across systems. They can analyse data, generate insights, handle support queries, automate workflows and help with research and documentation, among other things. Industry analysts predict there could be more than 1.3 billion AI agents in use by 2028. For organisations, this raises important questions about how to maintain oversight and management. Without governance, agent adoption can quickly lead to security risks, fragmented workflows, compliance challenges and limited visibility into what AI systems are doing. This is where Agent 365 – included with E7 – comes in. It acts as a control plane for all AI agents, allowing organisations to discover, manage, secure and monitor agents across the environment.
The second shift is in how AI integrates into everyday tools. Organisations are already used to seeing Copilot within the normal flow of work, embedded in the applications their teams use every day. Users are able to draft content, analyse data, summarise meetings, generate insights and automate tasks without ever leaving their workflow. E7 extends this by enabling organisations to build and deploy their own AI agents using Copilot Studio, so they can integrate AI into their internal systems and simplify admin-heavy processes that are specific to their organisation.
As AI becomes more autonomous, concerns around oversight and control increase. Governance is absolutely critical. Microsoft has designed E7 to include the full security and compliance stack, including:
This means organisations can scale AI use while maintaining control over data access, compliance, security policies and agent behaviour. This level of oversight is essential for any Frontier transformation strategy.
One of the key technologies underpinning Microsoft 365 E7 is Work IQ – an intelligence layer that identifies and connects signals from across an organisation. It looks at things like:
Then it uses these signals to give Copilot and AI agents a deeper understanding of how work actually gets done. This context means AI systems can generate responses and insights that are accurate, relevant, actionable, and specific to that organisation rather than generic outputs.
Microsoft 365 E7 is primarily designed for organisations that are already investing in AI and are looking to scale agent use and security. Good candidates for a shift to E7 include those that:
In reality, this generally means mid- to large-sized enterprises with hundreds or thousands of users that are looking to embed AI across multiple teams and workflows.
Here are all the key details you need to know about Microsoft 365 E7, from what it includes to pricing and availability.
When will Microsoft 365 E7 be available? Microsoft 365 E7 licences will be available generally from 1 May 2026.
How much does Microsoft 365 E7 cost? Microsoft 365 E7 is priced at $99 per user per month. According to Microsoft, this represents a saving of up to 15% compared to buying all the individual components separately.
Microsoft 365 E7 includes:
Agent 365 is a new platform for managing AI agents. It enables organisations to:
Agent 365 is included in the E7 licence but is also available as a standalone product for $15 per user per month. It launches alongside Microsoft 365 E7 on 1 May 2026.
The launch of Microsoft 365 E7 reflects a clear shift in how organisations are expected to use AI over the coming years. It’s no longer about isolated tools or early-stage pilots – it’s about embedding AI and agents into everyday work, with the structure, security and governance needed to make that sustainable at scale.
For organisations already investing in AI, E7 provides a more complete platform to bring those pieces together and help them move forward with confidence.
As organisations begin exploring Frontier Firm models, the real challenge is turning that potential into practical outcomes. That means identifying where AI can create value, deploying it in a way that fits how business actually works, and maintaining the right level of oversight as adoption grows.
BCN supports organisations through that process, from Copilot adoption and AI strategy to building and managing AI-powered workflows and agents. Our goal is simple: to help you move beyond experimentation and unlock measurable, sustainable impact with AI.
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