Editor's note (October 2026): This article has been updated to reflect a revised implementation date for Microsoft's usage-based billing default-on change for Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licenses (December 1, 2026) and to update related resource links and references.
AI at Work is entering a new phase as customers look beyond individual productivity gains to AI that can take on complex work, build solutions, and automate business processes. The next evolution of Frontier Transformation is about matching the right mode of intelligence to the task at hand.
Today, Microsoft is advancing that vision with the new Copilot, an evolution of the Copilot app that connects the tools people rely on with the next generation of capabilities they'll need to build, customize, and scale AI across work.
The Copilot app now includes three new capabilities: Home, where Chat and Copilot Cowork come together with the full power of Office; Code, powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot, extending solution-building to more knowledge workers; and Autopilot, a persistent, proactive, and personal agent that keeps working even when you're not. Together, these new capabilities expand what customers can do with Copilot and the platform partners can build on.
We are also introducing platform innovations including Microsoft IQ, Microsoft Copilot Managed Runtime, and an evolving commercial model with usage-based billing and FinOps for AI.
For Microsoft partners, the opportunity extends well beyond the product experience. Today's announcements advance Copilot across three connected dimensions: how people use AI, how customers adopt it commercially, and how partners build, extend, secure, govern, and manage it. That creates opportunities across AI advisory, security and governance, agent development and deployment, FinOps for AI, adoption and change management, software development, and ongoing managed services.
Learn more about today’s product announcement from Jared Spataro, Chief Marketing Officer, AI at Work.
What is new and why it matters for partners
One Copilot experience brings AI-powered work together
The new Copilot gives people access to the right capability for the work they want to accomplish:
- Home is the new starting point, bringing Chat—for questions, lookups, and drafts—together with Cowork, where work is delegated and returned as a completed result. Within the Home tab, Office in Copilot brings the full power of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into the app, creating and updating real, editable files that stay live for the whole team.
- Code turns natural-language ideas into apps, dashboards, automations, and workflows, with Copilot Managed Runtime providing the governed hosting infrastructure to run and share them inside Microsoft 365.
- Autopilot, previously called Scout, is a cloud-hosted digital teammate with its own identity, memory, and workspace that takes on work and keeps it moving within the permissions and boundaries the organization
Together, these capabilities let people match the right tool to the job, while staying in the flow of work.
For partners, this creates opportunities to move customers beyond assistive productivity into business process transformation, grounded in the organization’s own data, and governed by the permissions and controls IT already sets.
The commercial model evolves for AI-powered work
AI is changing how value is accessed, measured, and managed. User subscriptions remain the foundation for everyday Copilot value across Microsoft 365, with Auto at the heart of the subscription, weighing accuracy, speed, and cost on each request to route work to the model best suited to the job. Usage-based billing provides access to advanced and emerging capabilities, including frontier models and long-running agentic work in Cowork, Code, and Autopilot.
For partners, the shift creates a durable advisory and managed-services opportunity: guiding customers on which users and scenarios justify usage-based capabilities, forecasting consumption before it scales, and staying engaged as budgets, policies, and value measurement mature.
FinOps for AI introduces new ways to govern costs across Microsoft 365 experiences, including Code and Copilot Managed Runtime, with support for custom agents built in Copilot Studio following in October. Organizations can establish budgets, limits, and policies while connecting usage and spending more clearly to business outcomes. Admins can set which model families are available to different groups of users, and those settings also shape which models Auto can select from. People can monitor their own usage and how much capacity is left before they reach a limit.
Platform innovation to extend and scale AI
New and enhanced Copilot platform capabilities give partners more ways to build, integrate, and manage AI at scale. Copilot Managed Runtime (in public preview) supports apps built in Cowork, Code, and Copilot Studio. The new plugin registry (generally available by the end of the month) brings Microsoft, partner, and custom-built plugins into one catalog, simplifying governance, publishing, and discovery.
Microsoft IQ grounds Copilot in organizational context across Microsoft 365, and Work IQ (in public preview) extends that to the systems that run the business, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Partners can connect systems, knowledge, workflows, and business context to build Copilot and agent experiences tailored to each customer.
Fabric IQ brings trusted context from customer data, including the more than 20 million semantic models in Microsoft Power BI, into Chat and Cowork, and is generally available today. Partners working in data estates can connect that context directly to Copilot experiences.
The partner growth opportunity
The new Copilot creates three connected growth motions for partners: differentiated software, end-to-end transformation services, and recurring channel revenue. As customers progress from individual AI assistance to delegated, automated, and agent-powered work, partners can build solutions, deliver services, expand consumption, and deepen customer relationships.
Software development companies: Extend Copilot with differentiated solutions
Software development companies turn ideas into governed solutions by combining Chat and Cowork in Copilot with proprietary data, workflows, and industry expertise. They can develop skills, connectors, apps, and agents that securely connect Copilot with external systems.
This opportunity is already taking shape across industries: Atlassian brings collaborative work and project knowledge into Copilot; HubSpot integrates sales insights to expedite customer engagements; and Figma turns documents and context into structured diagrams in FigJam.
New platform capabilities make these solutions easier to build, extend, and govern. The shared connectors, skills, and plugins provide consistent experiences across Copilot. Copilot Studio, combined with the new GitHub Copilot Harness, reduces the effort and cost of building more capable agents. Copilot Managed Runtime provides the hosting foundation, with Microsoft handling identity, governance, and lifecycle management, so developers can deploy from the tools they already use.
The commercial opportunity extends from development and publishing through customer activation, expansion, and ongoing operations. The Copilot Cowork plugin development guide explains how to package skills and connectors as Microsoft 365 apps and prepare them for distribution. Software companies can publish solutions through Marketplace, develop reusable intellectual property, and generate recurring revenue as adoption and usage grow.
Systems integrators: Lead from strategy through ongoing operations
The services opportunity extends beyond initial deployment. In a Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Microsoft, the partner opportunity model estimates 152% year-over-year growth in expected revenue for the Agents solution area and 125% growth in expected revenue from managed services across Microsoft AI.¹ For systems integrators, the new Copilot expands opportunities across the AI transformation lifecycle.
Leading partners are building services across five areas:
- AI advisory: Work with business leaders to identify high-value scenarios by function, redesign processes as AI-led workflows, and define KPIs to measure business value.
- Secure, govern, and deploy: Establish the data security and governance foundations customers need so their data can power AI and deliver value.
- Agentic transformation: Govern and secure the customer's agentic estate and build and deploy both out-of-the-box and custom agents that meet business needs.
- FinOps for AI: Enable customers to plan by forecasting spend, manage through guardrails and usage policies, and optimize against value outcomes.
- Drive adoption: Offer end-user skilling and organizational change management services.
A growing opportunity exists in ongoing managed services, where partners become trusted advisors and stand up an AI Center of Excellence to manage a customer's AI transformation over time, tied to business value.
“The evolution of Microsoft Copilot is creating unprecedented opportunities to transform how work gets done. NTT DATA helps customers move from AI strategy to governed deployment, agentic solutions, and continuous optimization, delivering measurable business outcomes at scale. As systems integrators evolve, we play a critical role in helping enterprises realize lasting value from the Microsoft AI ecosystem.”
- Charlie Doubek, Head of Global AI Delivery, NTT DATA
“The role of systems integrators is evolving from implementing technology to helping clients reinvent how work gets done—moving beyond AI pilots and isolated productivity gains to deliver measurable business outcomes. Accenture works across organizations, industries and markets at a scale that gives us a unique perspective on what works—and what it takes to turn experimentation into enterprise transformation. Our role is to bring those lessons forward, helping clients stay focused on value, embed trust and governance by design, and turn AI and agents into sustained business performance.”
- Richard Holsman, Global Enterprise Lead, Accenture Microsoft Business Group, Accenture
“The future of work will be defined not by access to artificial intelligence (AI), but by access to context. As organizations scale from pilots to enterprise adoption, systems integrators must help people and agents work together, leveraging the knowledge and operational memory of the teams and systems they support within trusted governance frameworks. EY brings together context engineering, Responsible AI, security, deep sector experience within multidisciplinary delivery teams to help clients move from experimentation to governed deployment and measurable business value.”
- Alex Bennett, Partner, Technology Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP
Channel partners: Turn Copilot adoption into an ongoing customer growth motion
For Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners, the opportunity begins with a major change in how customers access Copilot’s usage-based capabilities.
Starting December 1, 2026, usage-based billing will be enabled by default for new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licenses, including stand-alone licenses and bundles, purchased through CSP. This change simplifies customer onboarding and reduces billing friction, making it easier to activate eligible experiences such as Copilot Cowork, Work IQ APIs, and GitHub Copilot Harness in Copilot Studio. Partners can focus less on billing configuration and more on driving adoption, demonstrating business value, and expanding customer consumption over time.
Copilot in 30 (download kit) provides a practical activation motion. Through a 30-day trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licenses, partners guide customers with a Copilot Success Plan, identify priority scenarios, accelerate adoption, and build the case for broader deployment. As customers mature, partners introduce Cowork, Code, and agent-based scenarios, creating a progression from everyday productivity to delegated work, solution building, and automation.
Microsoft investments further support this growth motion. The Copilot Cowork CSP Activation Incentive (PDF) provides eligible indirect resellers and direct bill partners with an opportunity to earn while driving qualifying Cowork activation and usage.
"Copilot Cowork now offers customers a flexible path to scale AI adoption across the business. Default-on usage-based billing removes complexity and makes it easier for organizations to expand from initial licensing into broader, consumption-driven AI adoption. For channel partners, the opportunity extends beyond deployment to helping customers optimize usage, manage costs, and continuously realize value. At Ingram Micro, we're focused on helping customers navigate that journey with the services, expertise, and support needed to maximize outcomes as their AI investments grow."
- Duncan Robinson, VP of Cloud and Services, Ingram Micro
“The channel's role is shifting from selling AI to sustaining it. SMB customers are past experimentation, and they're now asking how to make AI work in their business—and partners are expected to answer that while managing risk, adoption, and cost. Distribution's job is to close that gap at scale, giving thousands of partners the enablement, reusable accelerators, and services capacity to turn an initial Copilot investment into a durable AI practice across their SMB base.”
- Reza Honarmand, SVP Global Cloud & Hyperscalers, TD SYNNEX
Together, these motions expand customer adoption, consumption, optimization, and managed services. To prepare, review the guidance for usage-based billing and cost management for Copilot Credits, managing AI experiences enabled by usage-based billing, the Copilot Credits Guide, and the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business FAQ (PDF).
A partner action checklist
Understand the innovation
Learn about the opportunity and plan your approach
Take solutions to market
- Identify the right customers: Use AI Business Solutions & Security Insights and Cloud Ascent to align sales, marketing, customer success, and delivery around customer propensity, licensing, usage, renewals, whitespace, and incentive eligibility.
- Fund customer engagements: Eligible partners can use Frontier Accelerate for Copilot to support envisioning, deployment, and agent solution engagements.
- Systems integrators: Build repeatable offers around advisory, deployment and governance, agent development, and FinOps for AI, and take them to market through the playbooks and specializations above.
- Channel partners: Center your Copilot growth motion on usage-based billing (PPT). Copilot in 30 (download kit) and the Copilot Cowork CSP Activation Incentive (PDF) can support the customer journey from initial adoption to activation and expanded usage.
The new Copilot is rolling out through the Frontier program, with new capabilities and experiences arriving continuously. Join us at Microsoft Ignite, November 17–20, in San Francisco and online, to learn about the latest Copilot innovation and how it is empowering people and organizations to reimagine work and get value from AI.
Platform shifts succeed through partners, and this one is moving fast. Customers have moved from piloting AI to depending on it, and they are deciding now who they trust to run it: the partners who can redesign the process, govern the data, build and operate the agents, and manage the economics over time.
That is the opportunity in front of our ecosystem. Microsoft will continue investing in the platform, the programs, and the incentives to fuel our partners’ success. The future will be shaped by those who can turn intelligence into outcomes and trust into lasting customer value.
1. Total Economic Impact (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Microsoft, “The Partner Opportunity for Microsoft AI Business Solutions: Spotlight on AI Solution Plays,” July 2026. The study included interviews with representatives from 37 partners and a survey of 24 respondents from organizations with AI Business Solutions practices.