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Microsoft is making some major changes to Microsoft 365 in 2026. Two things IT leaders and admins should know:
For IT teams, this raises some important questions.
How much will these changes increase your Microsoft 365 costs? Do your current license assignments reflect how employees actually use Microsoft 365? Where might there be opportunities to optimize your Microsoft 365 footprint before costs increase?
Let's dive in.
How Jabra’s Scalable Video Solutions Bring Hybrid Meetings to Life.
At European Sign Expo 2026 in Cologne, we are excited to present how modern Microsoft 365 solutions can turn complex digital environments into structured, efficient, and scalable workplaces.
Microsoft 365 has become the backbone of modern collaboration. From email and documents to Teams chats and identity services, it powers how organizations work every day. But while Microsoft delivers a resilient platform, one critical fact remains: data protection is a shared responsibility — and protecting your Microsoft 365 data ultimately lies with you.
A manufacturing company wants to know which of its 14,000 SKUs actually turn a profit. The answer sits in three systems that have never exchanged a single data point. Until recently, getting it required three departments, two weeks and a good deal of goodwill. Since early 2026, an AI can answer that question in minutes: search the data, draw connections, produce a recommendation. Provided, that is, it has access.
The models are ready. They act, execute tasks across multiple steps and system boundaries, prepare decisions, trigger workflows. Many companies have already had their first taste of this through Copilot, but Copilot knows the M365 universe: emails, documents, calendars. To point AI at the data that actually runs the business, at ERP, CRM, IoT and production systems, you need a different foundation.
That foundation has three parts. We built each of them as a managed service, each goes live in three to four weeks, and together they form the platform on which AI can do real work.
As organisations across the Adriatics accelerate their Microsoft 365 adoption, strong governance is becoming essential—not optional. With the rise of Copilot and AIpowered productivity, knowing who has access to what and how your storage is being consumed is now a critical part of digital readiness.
DeliverPoint, built natively for modern SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, gives organisations the visibility and control they need to stay secure, compliant, and efficient.
For years, the collaboration industry has been driven by experience. We focused on creating impressive spaces, larger displays, better cameras, and environments designed to inspire. Technology became something to showcase, something to feel.
We are excited to join Collab Summit as a sponsor and connect with IT, security, and business leaders who are shaping the future of digital workplaces. At Rencore, our mission is simple: empowering organizations to evolve their digital workplace with confidence and control.
As organizations rapidly adopt AI and Copilot, governance becomes the prerequisite – not the afterthought.
Governance helps you to keep your environment secure, compliant, and cost-efficient while enabling people to collaborate and build freely!
That’s exactly where Rencore Governance comes in – and what we’ll be showcasing at Collab Summit.
As enterprises across Europe move rapidly toward AI driven operating models, the challenge is no longer experimentation—it is governance, control, cost optimization, and scale. YASH Technologies, a global digital transformation partner and Microsoft Solutions Partner, will be showcasing its capabilities at Booth No. 80 at the European AI & Cloud Summit 2026, helping organizations confidently evolve into AI first enterprises using Microsoft Cloud and NEUPAC™, YASH’s Agentic AI platform.
With 18+ years of Microsoft expertise, 1,300+ consultants, and deep experience across Azure, Data & AI, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Security, and Modern Work, YASH helps enterprises operationalize AI with measurable business value. At ECS 2026, visitors to Booth No. 80 can learn how YASH’s OneMicrosoft approach, combined with NEUPAC, enables CIOs, CTOs, and CXOs to establish control, visibility, and trust across enterprise AI environments.
There’s a moment most managers know too well: a talented new colleague joins, six weeks pass, and they’re still operating at half speed. So, you schedule yet another catch up, explain the same context again, and quietly wonder: “Is this a people problem?”
It isn’t. It’s an environment problem, or two, actually.
The way enterprises engage customers is undergoing a fundamental shift. AI agents, autonomous goal-driven systems capable of reasoning, adapting, and acting, are no longer experimental. They are being deployed across customer service, sales, and support functions, redefining what is possible in enterprise customer experience (CX).
But with that opportunity comes complexity. Managing a growing number of AI agents, ensuring they operate within governance frameworks, integrating them across channels and platforms, and scaling them with consistency, these are challenges that many enterprises are only beginning to navigate.
At Infobip, we believe the answer lies in a dedicated orchestration layer: one that gives enterprises the control, flexibility, and scalability to move beyond AI pilots and into real, measurable impact.
That layer is AgentOS.
Let’s be honest: keeping up with Microsoft 365 and AI can feel like a full-time job. New features appear overnight, AI evolves at lightning speed, and users are expected to “just keep up.” Training often ends up being postponed, skipped, or forgotten.
That’s exactly why we created PlayForward and why we’re excited to showcase it at the European Collaboration Summit.
The intranet solution that helps SharePoint integrators deliver faster, better, and at scale.
Visit Booth #71 at the European Collaboration Summit 2026 and discover how Involv intranet helps Microsoft 365 and SharePoint experts standardize and accelerate intranet delivery - without compromising governance, flexibility, or commercial viability.
Involv intranet is a modular framework built natively on SharePoint and Microsoft 365. It is not a separate platform, but a structured layer that enhances what you already build. It provides preconfigured components, UX structure, and communication capabilities so you can deliver complete intranet solutions with less foundational build work and greater consistency.
Stop writing formulas. Stop fighting XML. Stop coding for your SharePoint solutions.
Just describe what you need. Let AI build it.
Today, companies increasingly rely on cloud-based solutions such as Microsoft 365. However, standard
functionalities are often not sufficient when it comes to structured information processes, legally compliant
archiving, reliable data backup, transparent responsibilities, and consistent data control. This is exactly
where sitaas GmbH comes in with the OCC | Online Compliance Center — as a specialized extension to
existing Microsoft 365 environments.
Win a PlayStation 5 Pro at our booth. But first, let's talk about something more pressing: the governance mess hiding in your M365 tenant.
Boost productivity with dox42, the easy and powerful solution for automated document generation across any system.
Lee Stott is a Principal Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, focused on developer experience, AI platforms, and cloud-native architectures. You can find him at ECS 2026 in Cologne, 5–7 May 2026.
My generation, people in their 50s, is the only one who sets up printers for our parents and our kids. Not because we are good with printers — because we have had to learn this industry from scratch more times than is reasonable. Eight-bit machines, PCs, the internet, mobile, cloud, and now AI. And, every few years, someone announces that everything is about to change.
SharePoint at 25: From Load‑Bearing Platform to AI-Powered Knowledge Hub for Copilot and Agents
A conversation with Martina Grom on the evolution of the European Collaboration Summit, the art of building meaningful conference content, and how AI is reshaping the future of work, software, and community learning.
A conversation with Luise Freese on continuous learning, community spirit, and the importance of curiosity, empathy, and representation in tech.
In this episode of Road TCS, the hosts welcome Carlotta Castelluccio to discuss her experience at the European Cloud Summit, the role of a cloud advocate, and how AI and agent development have evolved over the past year. The conversation explores the gap between cutting-edge innovation and real-world adoption, the rise of AI-assisted development, and why developers are increasingly becoming “managers of agents.” Carlotta also shares what attendees can expect from her upcoming ECS session, focusing on the full lifecycle of building, evaluating, and deploying AI agents.
Daniel Laswitz shares his journey from SharePoint developer to Microsoft cloud advocate, discusses the evolution of AI and low-code, and highlights what makes ECS and the Power Platform valuable for building secure, scalable solutions.
A discussion on tech communities, AI’s growing role, and the importance of connection, learning, and supporting new voices.
Marco Casalaina (VP of Core AI at Microsoft) joins the Road to ECS to discuss the latest breakthroughs in AI agents, from computer-use automation to real-time “nudging,” and what it all means for the future of development.
A relaxed, insightful conversation with Mark Kashman about his transition from Microsoft to consulting, how product feedback really works behind the scenes, and the realities of building features at scale.
A podcast episode discussing Microsoft’s ECS conference, AI trends, and how developers are building and evaluating modern AI systems.
A reflective season opener of Road to ECS, covering ECS 2025 highlights, community experiences, and early thoughts on ECS 2026 in Cologne.
Rob Pike, co-creator of Go, Plan 9, and UTF-8, received an AI-generated thank you email on Christmas Day and responded with fury. His reaction crystallizes essential concerns about AI's environmental impact, economic irrationality, and the irony of machines expressing gratitude they cannot feel.
Sponsoring a major event like the European Collaboration, AI and Cloud & BizApps Summit is far more than a logo on a banner, it's your chance to connect, engage, and leave a lasting impression. Learn how to make the most of your sponsorship.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Memory fundamentally changes how AI assistants personalize enterprise productivity. By remembering user preferences, working styles, and project context, Memory transforms Copilot from a stateless assistant into an adaptive productivity partner that learns continuously.
Microsoft has consolidated its agentic AI capabilities into a single open-source framework that unifies research-driven innovation with enterprise-grade reliability. Released in public preview on October 1, 2025, Microsoft Agent Framework merges AutoGen's dynamic multi-agent orchestration with Semantic Kernel's production foundations.
Microsoft announced a transformative evolution of Microsoft Sentinel from a cloud-native SIEM into a comprehensive agentic security platform, introducing the Model Context Protocol server in public preview, enabling autonomous AI agents to defend against sophisticated threats at machine speed.
Microsoft launched Fabric MCP Server on October 1, 2025, bringing the Model Context Protocol standard to its unified data platform. This open-source implementation enables AI agents like GitHub Copilot and Claude to interact with Fabric workloads through natural language, transforming how developers build data pipelines, query real-time analytics, and manage infrastructure.
Microsoft introduces Agent Mode and Office Agent capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot, fundamentally shifting from simple AI assistance to sophisticated multi-step task orchestration.
The promise of autonomous development has haunted our industry for years. The latest evolution of Claude Code, powered by Sonnet 4.5, represents something fundamentally different – not because it claims to be revolutionary, but because it actually addresses the practical challenges developers face when attempting to delegate meaningful work to AI systems.
Microsoft's September 24, 2025 announcement marks a fundamental shift in enterprise AI strategy: Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 are now integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling organizations to leverage both OpenAI and Anthropic models for the first time.
The September 2025 federal lawsuit filed by Elon Musk's xAI against OpenAI in Northern California federal court represents a dramatic escalation in the artificial intelligence industry's increasingly aggressive competition for talent and technological advantage.
The consolidation of Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource into a single Microsoft Marketplace marks a fundamental shift in how organizations discover, deploy, and manage cloud solutions. This transformation, announced on September 25, 2025, addresses longstanding complexity while introducing capabilities that reshape enterprise software procurement and deployment strategies.
LinkedIn will begin training AI models on European user data starting November 3, 2025, reversing its 2024 exclusion of EU regions and triggering immediate regulatory warnings from data protection authorities.
Italy has become the first EU member state to pass comprehensive artificial intelligence legislation, with Bill 1146/2024 receiving Senate approval in 2025. This pioneering law establishes criminal penalties, child protection measures, and a complex regulatory framework that both complements and challenges the EU AI Act.
Microsoft has fundamentally transformed its approach to intelligent document processing through a strategic evolution from SharePoint Syntex to SharePoint Premium, with the pay-as-you-go services now branded as Document Processing for Microsoft 365.
China's September 2025 ban on Nvidia's AI chips marks a dramatic escalation in the global semiconductor war, shifting from defensive to offensive posturing as Beijing ordered domestic tech giants to stop purchasing RTX Pro 6000D and H20 processors.
A comprehensive analysis of Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse's transformative impact on business applications, examining real-world performance, European compliance, and strategic implementation for Power Platform professionals.
Microsoft's September 2025 eDiscovery Graph API updates mark the most significant expansion of compliance automation capabilities in the platform's history, democratizing API access to E3 customers for the first time while introducing consumption-based pricing at $10 per GB.
Microsoft is implementing the most significant architectural change to Teams private channels since their 2019 debut, with a complete storage model redesign rolling out between late September and December 2025.
Microsoft's announcement of three new security and compliance add-ons for Microsoft 365 Business Premium, launching in September 2025, addresses security challenges by bringing enterprise-grade protection within reach of organisations with up to 300 users.
Microsoft and OpenAI signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding on September 11, 2025, resolving months of partnership tensions while fundamentally restructuring how enterprises will deploy artificial intelligence.
Microsoft is actively integrating Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4 AI technology into Office 365 applications including Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, marking a historic shift from exclusive reliance on OpenAI's models.
Reinforcement Learning-as-a-Service (RLaaS) represents a fundamental shift in how enterprises deploy AI, moving from static models to continuously learning systems that optimize for long-term business outcomes through trial-and-error experience.
Microsoft Teams has introduced an innovative AI-powered audio recap feature that converts meeting transcripts into podcast-style summaries, fundamentally changing how enterprise teams catch up on missed meetings.
Microsoft OneLake fundamentally transforms how enterprises manage data, delivering a single, unified data lake that eliminates traditional silos while meeting stringent European compliance requirements.
ASML, the Dutch semiconductor equipment monopolist, has invested €1.3 billion to become the largest shareholder in French AI startup Mistral AI, marking Europe's most significant technology convergence deal and a strategic alliance aimed at establishing European technological independence in the AI era.
On September 5, 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a class action copyright lawsuit brought by authors, marking the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. The settlement resolves allegations that Anthropic illegally downloaded millions of pirated books to train its Claude AI chatbot.
DeepL launched its AI Agent in beta on September 3, 2025, marking a shift from translation specialist to direct challenger of OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic in the $196.6 billion AI agent market, leveraging European privacy standards and seven years of language AI expertise.
Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel have merged into a unified security operations platform that fundamentally changes how organizations detect and respond to threats.
Mistral AI is reportedly finalizing a €2 billion funding round at a $14 billion valuation led by Abu Dhabi's MGX Fund, positioning the French startup as Europe's most valuable AI company and the world's fourth-largest AI unicorn.
Microsoft officially launched its Austria East datacenter region in Vienna in August 2025, marking a significant expansion of data residency capabilities for Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and Dynamics 365 services.
Microsoft announced the concurrent retirement of Microsoft Graph Toolkit and Microsoft Graph CLI on August 29, 2025, with both tools entering deprecation on September 1, 2025 and reaching full retirement on August 28, 2026.
Microsoft's August 28, 2025 announcement of MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview marks a calculated shift toward AI self-sufficiency, signaling the company's evolution from OpenAI dependent to multi-model orchestrator while committing $80 billion to AI infrastructure for fiscal year 2025.
And What We Don't Know Yet, And Might Never Find Out
Comprehensive analysis of enterprise AI governance frameworks, regulatory compliance, and practical implementation strategies for autonomous agents in the modern enterprise environment.
Microsoft's SharePoint Page Template Gallery and Site Header/Footer Enhancements represent major advances in content creation efficiency and branding capabilities, delivering immediate productivity benefits while supporting long-term SharePoint modernization strategies.
The rapid evolution of Microsoft's AI development platforms has created a powerful but sometimes confusing landscape for developers and architects. Understanding when to use Azure AI Foundry vs. Semantic Kernel - or how to combine them - has become crucial for successful AI implementations.
After working with dozens of Power Platform implementations across Europe, I've noticed a consistent gap between the monitoring capabilities organizations need and what they actually implement.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) represents a fundamental shift in how AI agents interact with external tools and data sources, moving beyond traditional API paradigms to create a purpose-built, AI-native integration standard.
Microsoft has taken a significant step forward in spreadsheet intelligence with the COPILOT function, now rolling out to Beta Channel users. This native Excel formula brings large language models directly into cells.
Microsoft has officially integrated OpenAI's GPT-5 into Microsoft 365 Copilot as of August 7, 2025, marking the most significant AI advancement in the platform's history.
GPT-5 launched on August 7, 2025, bringing unprecedented AI capabilities to Microsoft Copilot Studio with immediate availability in experimental environments.
Thirteen editions of the ECS. Thirteen remarkable journeys through the evolving landscape of technology.
