DOES YOUR BUSINESS QUALIFY FOR FREE FASTTRACK SUPPORT?

When Microsoft announced the general availability of Copilot for Microsoft

365 in January, it also removed all limitations on rollout sizes. Up until that point, you needed to commit to 300 seats for a minimum of a year. At $30 exc VAT per user per month—on top of the cost of Office 365 itself, which is a minimum of $23 exc VAT per user per month for the E3 version—that added up to a $108,000 investment over the course of a year. Minimum.

The sweetener to that deal is that companies received direct support from Microsoft via its FastTrack experts. Now, that offer extends to companies with 150 paid-for Office 365 (or Microsoft 365) licences—if, that is, you fulfil four other criteria.

The first is easy: you must already use the Office apps. The second is that you are ‘Teams ready’, which means that you share content in meetings (such as Word docs) and hold meetings with at least three people in attendance.

The third is trickier: you must commit to monthly channel refreshes of Office software. Many businesses prefer the six-monthly refresh, as this gives them time to test line-ofbusiness software. Switching to a monthly refresh comes with extra hassle and potentially higher costs.

Microsoft’s final criterion revolves around labeling. You must either have an existing MIP labeling policy (MIP stands for Microsoft Information Protection and relates to labelling around

Azure data) or have your own labeling policies in place. If you fulfil those criteria, get in touch with Microsoft directly.

‘Teams-ready’ businessesmaybeable toaccessfreesupport.