Microsoft announced a new enterprise license this week (March 9th) called Microsoft 365 E7, also referred to as the Frontier Suite. It is positioned above E5 and bundles together several of the capabilities that many organizations are currently adding separately. It has been a long time since Microsoft released a new enterprise license, and there has been quite a few organizations that have been complaining about the E5 “beeing watered down” since it release. The E5 was more or less promoted as the “All-inclusive” license when it was released.
The E7 is yet again that. The “All-inclusive” license for the AI workforce.
What is included in the Microsoft 365 E7
The Microsoft 365 E7 compines several different components that many organizations today license individually. Well, not all are relased yet, but I am pretty sure that many organizations are waiting for it to be relased. The E7, along with some of the components are released on May 1, 2026.
The Suite includes:
- Microsoft 365 E5
- Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Agent 365
- Microsoft Entra Suite
To me this actually makes sense as it includes many separate item that organizations license, or think about licensing, separately today. Instead of building an AI capable environment by stacking multiple add-ons on top of E5, Microsoft is offering a single license that already assumes an AI driven workplace.
The price is listed at $99 per user per month, that means a roughly calculated savings of $18 per user per month.
Agents, agents, agents…
One of the interesting parts of the E7 is the inclusion of Agents 365 that is being launched at the same time as the E7 license. Agent 365 is Microsoft’s control center for AI agents in the enterprise.
As organizations start using more AI agents across Microsoft 365 and other platforms, Agent 365 gives IT and security teams a way to see, manage, and govern those agents in a better way.
It doesn’t help employees do work directly. Instead, it makes sure AI agents are secure, compliant, and under control.
Governance will matter now more than ever!
One thing that quickly becomes clear when agents start appearing across the organization is that governance becomes more and more important. Giving everyone access to Copilot and the ability to build agents can unlock a lot of creativity and efficiency but it also means that agents may start interacting with sensitive information, automating processes, and calling external systems.
This is not a completely new challenge. It is the exact same governance discussion we have had for years around users, applications, and automation. The difference is that the scale and autonomy of agents will make those controls even more important going forward.
What about existing E5 customers?
There is one detail that is still not entirely clear.
Many organizations have recently signed multi year subscriptions for E5, often through CSP or other enterprise agreements. Some of those commitments run for up to three years.
Microsoft clearly positions E7 as the next step for customers using E5, but so far there is limited public guidance about how those customers transition if they are already in an active subscription term.
CSP technically supports midterm upgrades to higher level SKUs, but it is not yet clear how broadly that applies to E7. If customers have to wait until their current agreement expires before moving to E7, that could mean some organizations will not realistically adopt it for several years.
Hopefully Microsoft will provide clear guidance on this soon.
What are your thoughts? Is the E7 interesting? Let me know in the comments.
