Microsoft will raise Microsoft 365 and Office 365 prices in July 2026, citing new AI and security upgrades for business and government users.
The post Microsoft to Hike Office Prices in 2026, Citing Major AI and Security Overhauls appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft will raise Microsoft 365 and Office 365 prices in July 2026, citing new AI and security upgrades for business and government users.
The post Microsoft to Hike Office Prices in 2026, Citing Major AI and Security Overhauls appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting Friday played out as if on a split screen: executives describing a future where AI cures diseases and secures networks, and shareholder proposals warning of algorithmic bias, political censorship, and complicity in geopolitical conflict.
One shareholder, William Flaig, founder and CEO of Ridgeline Research, quoted two authorities on the topic — George Orwell’s 1984 and Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot — in requesting a report on the risks of AI censorship of religious and political speech.
Flaig invoked Orwell’s dystopian vision of surveillance and thought control, citing the Ministry of Truth that “rewrites history and floods society with propaganda.” He then turned to Copilot, which responded to his query about an AI-driven future by noting that “the risk lies not in AI itself, but in how it’s deployed.”
In a Q&A session during the virtual meeting, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company is “putting the person and the human at the center” of its AI development, with technology that users “can delegate to, they can steer, they can control.”
Nadella said Microsoft has moved beyond abstract principles to “everyday engineering practice,” with safeguards for fairness, transparency, security, and privacy.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, said broader societal decisions, like what age kids should use AI in schools, won’t be made by tech companies. He cited ongoing debates about smartphones in schools nearly 20 years after the iPhone.
“I think quite rightly, people have learned from that experience,” Smith said, drawing a parallel to the rise of AI. “Let’s have these conversations now.”
Microsoft’s board recommended that shareholders vote against all six outside proposals, which covered issues including AI censorship, data privacy, human rights, and climate. Final vote tallies have yet to be released as of publication time, but Microsoft said shareholders turned down all six, based on early voting.
While the shareholder proposals focused on AI risks, much of the executive commentary focused on the long-term business opportunity.
Nadella described building a “planet-scale cloud and AI factory” and said Microsoft is taking a “full stack approach,” from infrastructure to AI agents to applications, to capitalize on what he called “a generational moment in technology.”
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood highlighted record results for fiscal year 2025 — more than $281 billion in revenue and $128 billion in operating income — and pointed to roughly $400 billion in committed contracts as validation of the company’s AI investments.
Hood also addressed pre-submitted shareholder questions about the company’s AI spending, pushing back on concerns about a potential bubble.
“This is demand-driven spending,” she said, noting that margins are stronger at this stage of the AI transition than at a comparable point in Microsoft’s cloud buildout. “Every time we think we’re getting close to meeting demand, demand increases again.”
I usually defend Excel come hell or high water. However, when it comes to regular expressions (regexes), even I admit that open-source LibreOffice Calc is superior: it treats them as native search rules, simplifying conditional tasks to a single, clean formula.
A sophisticated phishing campaign is targeting users through Microsoft Teams notifications, exploiting the platform’s trusted status to deliver deceptive messages that appear legitimate to both recipients and email security filters. Threat actors are leveraging Teams’ official notification system to send emails from the no-reply@teams.mail.microsoft address, creating a false sense of authenticity that makes detection increasingly difficult. The […]
The post Hackers Abuse Microsoft Teams Notifications to Launch Callback Phishing Attacks appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.
Picture this: yet another Excel report lands in my inbox, and, once again, it's a nightmare of leading spaces, inconsistent spelling, and useless rows. Previously, I would spend hours fixing it manually. Now, however, I use Power Query to profile the mess, sanitize the text, clean up the structure, and remove all the needless clutter.
AI 시장이 지나치게 과열된 탓이든, 기업 CIO들이 구매 계획을 축소하기로 결정했기 때문이든, 마이크로소프트와 오픈AI를 비롯한 주요 AI 서비스 업체가 매출 전망을 하향 조정하는 움직임이 나타나고 있다.
더인포메이션(The Information)은 여러 영업 조직이 목표를 달성하지 못한 이후 마이크로소프트가 일부 제품의 AI 영업 할당량을 줄였다고 보도하면서, 복잡한 업무를 자동화하는 AI 에이전트에서 기대한 매출에 대한 전망을 “조정하고 있는” 기업이 마이크로소프트만이 아니라고 전했다. 보도에 따르면, 오픈AI는 향후 5년 동안 AI 에이전트 매출 전망을 260억 달러 규모로 하향 조정했다.
그레이하운드 리서치(Greyhound Research)의 최고 애널리스트 산치트 비르 고기아는 “AI 영업 할당량 축소는 시장 위기의 전조가 아니라, 지난 1년 동안 구조적인 산업 전환이라기보다 골드러시 같은 열풍이 이어졌던 상황이라 엔터프라이즈 기술 시장이 마침내 현실로 돌아오고 있다는 신호”라고 말했다.
고기아는 “지난 18개월 동안 많은 업체가 고객이 현실적으로 소화할 수 있는 수준을 훨씬 뛰어넘는 공격적인 목표를 설정했다”면서 “엔터프라이즈 구매 담당자는 이런 도구를 충분히 시험해 보거나 통합 복잡성을 점검하거나, 복잡하게 얽힌 자사 시스템 안에서 약속한 효과가 실제로 유지되는지 평가해 볼 기회도 갖지 못한 채 다년간 AI에 투자하라는 요구를 받았다”라고 지적했다.
고기아는 영업 압박이 느슨해지는 현상에 대해 “급한 쪽으로 너무 기울어 있던 대화의 균형을 되찾는 건강한 움직임”이라고 평가했다. 또 “이번 조정의 핵심은 솔루션 업체가 내세운 약속과 엔터프라이즈 사용 경험 사이의 격차다. 구매자가 AI를 포기하는 것이 아니라, 과대광고에서 한 발 물러서는 것”이라고 덧붙였다.
기업은 이미 가치가 입증된 곳에만 투자하기로 선택하고 있다. 고기아는 “2023년부터 2025년까지 그레이하운드 리서치 조사 결과를 보면, 대부분 조직이 거의 비슷한 시점에 같은 깨달음에 도달했다. 지속 가능한 AI 성과를 만들려면 초기 마케팅이 내세운 것보다 훨씬 많은 기초 작업이 필요하다는 사실을 알게 됐다”라고 말했다.
데이터 준비에는 시간이 필요하고, AI 모델의 동작을 조율해야 한다는 뜻이다. 고기아는 “AI 거버넌스 프레임워크는 즉흥적으로 만들 수 없다. 많은 경우 기대했던 효과의 속도와 범위가, 실제 프로덕션 시스템에 적용됐을 때 기술이 제공할 수 있는 수준보다 지나치게 빠르고 넓었다”라고 비판했다.
인포테크 리서치 그룹(Info-Tech Research Group) 자문 펠로우 스콧 빅클리는 마이크로소프트의 영업 할당량 축소 배경에는 자초한 측면이 있다며, “마이크로소프트의 AI 시장 공략 방식은 오만함에 기반하고, 시장 지배력을 최대한 활용하는 전략이었다”라고 지적했다.
빅클리는 “출발점부터 마이크로소프트는 고객이 AI를 대규모로 도입하더라도 정가를 매우 높게 책정하고 할인은 최소화했다. 코파일럿이든 애저 파운드리든 이들 제품을 ‘완전히 준비된 솔루션, 즉시 도입할 수 있고, 막대한 투자 대비 효과를 내는 턴키 패키지’인 것처럼 제시해 왔다”라며, “마이크로소프트가 이런 제품에 대해 프리미엄 가격을 청구하지만, 실제로는 절반만 완성된 수준이어서 본격적인 운영 환경에 투입할 준비가 전혀 돼 있지 않고 가격도 지나치게 비싸다”라고 비판했다.
빅클리는 “여기에 더해, 이런 도구를 제대로 활용하고 비즈니스 프로세스를 다시 설계하려면 고객 조직 안에 상당한 인재 역량이 필요하다는 점은 아예 고려조차 하지 않는다”고 지적했다.
빅클리는 CIO의 입장에서 바라본다면, “이번 움직임을 하나의 단서로 삼아 기술 자체 외에 필요한 모든 요소를 포괄하는 제대로 된 AI 전략을 실제로 구축하고 있는지, 기술로 무엇을 달성하려고 하는지 한 발 떨어져서 점검해야 한다”라고 조언했다. 또한, “생산성 향상은 방정식의 한 부분일 뿐이며, 진정한 가치를 내려면 지금까지 없었던 수준의 개인화, 새로운 예측 능력, 새로운 성과와 매출 성장을 이끄는 퍼포먼스가 필요하다”라고 덧붙였다.
퓨처럼 그룹(Futurum Group) 엔터프라이즈 소프트웨어·디지털 워크플로우 담당 리서치 디렉터 키스 커크패트릭은 AI 지형이 다른 측면에서도 크게 바뀌고 있다고 분석했다. 커크패트릭은 수요일 발표한 분석 보고서에서 “엔터프라이즈 소프트웨어 시장은 AI 과대광고에서 임베디드 방식의 운영 AI로 변하고 있으며, 주요 솔루션 업체는 AI를 워크플로우와 데이터 계층, 멀티 에이전트 오케스트레이션 프레임워크에 직접 통합하고 있다”라고 밝혔다.
커크패트릭은 “AI 도입이 확산되면서 논의의 초점도 단순한 기능 비교에서 가치 실현, 거버넌스, 상호운용성, 진화하는 AI 가격 모델로 옮겨갔다”라며, “2026년을 내다보면 구매자는 측정 가능한 비즈니스 성과를 우선하면서 통합된 데이터 기반과 잘 설계된 멀티 에이전트 아키텍처를 통해 AI 기반 매출 성장, 비용 절감, 운영 확장 효과를 입증해 보이는 업체를 선택할 것”이라고 전망했다.
기업이 이른바 “과장 경쟁”과 수식어 남발에 점점 피로감을 느끼고 있다는 점도 지적했다. 커크패트릭은 “2026년에는 조달 부서가 단순히 업무 단위 생산성 향상만 보여주는 수준을 넘어, 비즈니스 핵심 성과 지표에 직접 연계된 고객 사례를 제시하는 업체에 더 높은 점수를 줄 것이므로 솔루션 업체는 경쟁사의 신규 고객 사례와 성과 지표를 면밀히 모니터링해야 한다”라고 말했다.
한편 빅클리는 CIO에게 AI 관련 의사결정을 내릴 때 “AI 과대광고의 소용돌이 속으로 서둘러 뛰어들 필요가 없다는 점을 받아들이라”고 조언했다. 빅클리는 “각 기업에 맞는 방향을 차분하게 설계하고 계획할 시간을 충분히 가져도 실제로 뒤처지는 것은 아니다”라며, “AI 하이프 사이클이 워낙 시끄럽고 어디에나 존재하다 보니 이성적인 논리와 합리적인 판단이 완전히 묻혀 버렸다”라고 비판했다.
고기아도 이런 견해에 동의했다. 고기아는 “초기 하이프 사이클의 열풍은 이미 지나갔다”라며, “기술의 잠재력은 여전히 강력하지만, 지금은 훨씬 더 냉정한 시각과 안정된 태도로 평가가 이뤄지고 있다. AI 솔루션 업체는 빠르게 매출을 올리는 것보다 시간을 들여 쌓은 신뢰가 훨씬 더 가치 있다는 사실을 깨닫고 이런 새로운 리듬에 맞춰 움직이고 있다”라고 말했다.
또한, “이런 성숙함을 받아들이는 조직이 향후 10년간 엔터프라이즈 AI의 방향을 지속 가능하고 신뢰할 수 있으며, 실제 운영 현실에 기반한 모습으로 만들어 갈 것”이라고 강조했다.
고기아는 현재 마이크로소프트 등에서 벌어지고 있는 상황에 대해 “모멘텀의 상실이 아니라 겉보기에 화려한 성과에서 진짜 실질적인 내용으로 중심축이 이동하는 과정”이라고 진단했다. 고기아는 “지금 AI 시장은 진정한 진보는 과장된 퍼포먼스가 아니라, 조용하지만 일관된 실행과 절제에서 나온다는 사실을 깨닫고 있다”라며, “이번 사이클에서 처음으로 이런 ‘절제’가 눈에 보이기 시작했다”라고 덧붙였다.
dl-ciokorea@foundryco.com
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
On macOS, you can instantly look up files and launch apps with Spotlight search. Even many popular Linux distros offer snappy search bars like Spotlight. But on Windows, there is no central interface to search for every file, setting, and app. File Explorer takes forever to load searches, the Start search doesn’t always give relevant suggestions, if at all. Most of the time, it just plugs into Bing web results or displays ads for Microsoft products. We can’t fix Windows search, but we can replace it with a better option.
Cyber Week pricing is live — score major savings on Windows, Office, and more through TechRepublic Academy.
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— Jordan Arnold is the new director of the Washington State Broadband Office within the Department of Commerce, effective Jan. 2.
Under the Biden administration, Arnold served as a senior policy advisor on the Infrastructure Implementation Team within the Office of the Chief of Staff. Her work focused on helping lead the $65 billion broadband portfolio, which included implementation of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and other initiatives.
“Jordan has a deep understanding of what it takes to help communities succeed in a digital world,” said Commerce Director Joe Nguyễn in statement. “Her background working at the highest policy levels in the Biden White House will help power Washington forward in our efforts to connect everyone to the internet.”
— Rebecca Lovell has taken the role of interim president and CEO of Greater Seattle Partners (GSP), a regional public-private economic development organization. She has served as chief operating officer of the group for nearly three years.
Lovell’s past roles include CEO of Denali Founder Consulting, executive director of Madrona Venture Group’s Create33, and Seattle’s interim director of Economic Development.
“Rebecca has been a key leader in our organization’s success, and we are delighted to see her at the helm of GSP. She energizes the community, the GSP team and our investors,” said Shane Jones, chair of GSP’s board of directors and a senior vice president at Alaska Airlines, in a statement.
Lovell is succeeding Brian Surratt, who took the presidency in 2022 and was recently appointed deputy mayor of the City of Seattle by Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson.
“We deeply appreciate Brian’s service, commitment and transformational leadership and are excited to see him in this strategic role with the City of Seattle,” Jones said.
Prior to Greater Seattle Partners, Surratt led a community development group, was VP at Alexandria Real Estate and spent 13 years with Seattle’s Economic Development agency, including as director.
— Jason Barnwell, a former Microsoft legal executive, is now chief legal officer for Agiloft, a California company providing software that helps businesses manage their contracts and legal agreements.
“Jason knows how to unlock the potential of legal teams, harness AI and data, and make contracting a true driver of business value,” said Agiloft CEO Eric Laughlin in a statement.
Barnwell was with the tech giant for more 15 years in a variety of legal roles. He left the position of general manager and associate general counsel for Monetization and Business Planning. Barnwell will remain in the Seattle area. On LinkedIn, he thanked his Microsoft colleagues for their support and leadership opportunities, noting that he remains “a cheerleader for Microsoft and its people.”
— Elena Winters has joined Brazil’s Elea Data Centers as vice president of international business. Seattle-based Winters was previously at Meta for more than eight years in infrastructure organization roles focused on data center and site selection. She will remain in Washington, leading Elea’s U.S. and international expansion strategy.
“Now, I’m stepping into a new challenge — gaining experience on the other side of the business, partnering closely with hyperscalers (not working for them!) to help accelerate the growth of AI infrastructure in LATAM,” Winters said on LinkedIn.
— Seattle startup Aarden AI named Michael Gleason as its staff data scientist. The company recently came out of stealth and offers an AI platform that helps landowners research and navigate deals with developers eager to build data centers, clean energy installations, housing and other uses. Gleason most recently worked as a geospatial data scientist at a national laboratory.
Editor’s note: Story updated to include interim CEO for Rebecca Lovell’s new title.
Cyber Week pricing is live — score major savings on Windows, Office, and more through TechRepublic Academy.
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Microsoft is currently investigating a serious service issue preventing customers from downloading Microsoft 365 desktop applications directly from the service homepage. The company has tagged the problem as an "Incident," which means it’s a critical service issue with noticeable user impact.
The more programs set to auto-launch on startup, the longer your computer takes to boot. That's doubly true for machines with older hardware. Allow me to show you different ways to identify and disable startup apps and speed up your PC's boot time.
Many Excel spreadsheets use the IFERROR function to handle errors, but this masks critical structural and data issues. Although other functions like ISERROR offer more control, IFNA is the best option because it forces all serious issues to remain visible for debugging.
The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-9491, allowed cybercriminals to hide malicious commands from users inspecting files through Windows' standard interface.
The post Microsoft Silently Fixes 8-Year Windows Security Flaw appeared first on TechRepublic.
The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-9491, allowed cybercriminals to hide malicious commands from users inspecting files through Windows' standard interface.
The post Microsoft Silently Fixes 8-Year Windows Security Flaw appeared first on TechRepublic.
Choosing a Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner is as critical as choosing the platform. This guide shows how to match your roadmap to the right partner model — including mid-market specialists like JourneyTeam — so your CRM and ERP investments deliver long-term value.
The post How to Choose the Right Microsoft Dynamics Partner for your Business appeared first on TechRepublic.
Choosing a Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner is as critical as choosing the platform. This guide shows how to match your roadmap to the right partner model — including mid-market specialists like JourneyTeam — so your CRM and ERP investments deliver long-term value.
The post How to Choose the Right Microsoft Dynamics Partner for your Business appeared first on TechRepublic.
It may be due to an overheated AI hype cycle or a decision by CIOs to scale back on their purchasing plans, but sales projections are being lowered at both Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as potentially at a host of other AI providers.
On Wednesday, The Information reported that Microsoft has reduced AI quotas for certain products after multiple sales teams failed to hit their goals, and stated that it is not the only firm that is “adjusting expectations for revenue for AI agents that automate complex tasks.” The article noted that OpenAI, for instance, recently lowered its projections for AI agent revenue by $26 billion over the next five years.
According to Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, “the pullback in AI sales quotas is not a warning sign for the market. It is a signal that the enterprise technology world is finally returning to reality after a year that felt more like a gold rush than a structured industry shift.”
Over the past 18 months, he said, “many vendors pushed targets that were far ahead of what customers could reasonably absorb. Enterprise buyers were asked to make multi-year AI commitments before they had a fair chance to test the tools, examine their integration complexity, or evaluate whether the promised gains would hold up inside their own messy, interconnected systems.”
The slowdown in sales pressure, Gogia said, is therefore healthy because it restores balance in conversations that had tipped too far towards urgency.
He pointed out, “the gap between vendor promises and enterprise experience is the heart of this correction. Buyers are not turning away from AI. They are stepping away from hype. They are choosing to invest only where they have already seen evidence of value.”
Greyhound’s research between 2023 and 2025, he said, “shows that most organizations reached the same point at roughly the same time. They discovered that building sustainable AI outcomes requires far more groundwork than early marketing suggested. Data preparation takes time. Model behaviour needs tuning.”
Governance frameworks, said Gogia, “cannot be improvised. In many cases, the imagined benefits were simply too quick and too broad compared to what the technology could deliver once it met real production systems.”
Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, suggested that the real cause for Microsoft’s reduction in quotas could be self-inflicted: “My take on Microsoft’s approach to the market with AI is one of arrogance, and one of leveraging their market position.”
From the get-go, he said, the company has offered extremely high list pricing and minimal discounting, even when a customer purchases at scale. And, he noted, “they present these products, whether you’re talking about Copilot or Azure Foundry, as if they’re fully baked-in solutions, turnkey, ready to roll, and that they drive tons of return on investment.”
Although Microsoft charges a premium price for these products, said Bickley, “the reality is they’re half baked, they’re not ready for prime time, and they’re vastly overpriced. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the talent required at the end user organization to use these tools, and re-engineer their business processes.”
He added that if he were a CIO, “I would want to take this bread crumb, this clue, and zoom out a little bit and [determine], am I really building out a proper AI strategy that encompasses all of the different components outside of the technology itself? What am I trying to accomplish with the technology?”
He added, “productivity is one piece of the equation, but to really drive value, you need to have personalization, predictive value that you don’t have today, performance, revenue-driving performance that you don’t have today.”
The AI landscape has changed in other ways as well, noted Keith Kirkpatrick, research director, enterprise software and digital workflows at The Futurum Group. He wrote in an analysis released Wednesday, “the enterprise software market shifted decisively from AI hype to embedded, operational agentic AI, with major vendors integrating intelligence directly into workflows, data layers, and multi-agent orchestration frameworks.”
As deployments have scaled, he said, “the conversation moved beyond capabilities to focus on value realization, governance, interoperability, and evolving AI pricing models. Looking ahead to 2026, buyers will prioritize measurable business outcomes, rewarding vendors that can demonstrate AI-driven revenue gains, cost reductions, and operational scale enabled by unified data foundations and well-governed multi-agent architectures.”
Kirkpatrick observed that buyers are increasingly fatigued by what he referred to as “claims wars” and superlatives. In 2026, he said, procurement teams will reward vendors that can demonstrate more than just task-level efficiency, so vendors should monitor their competitors’ emerging customer case studies tied to business KPIs.
Meanwhile, Bickley’s advice to CIOs about anything involving AI is this: “Try and come to the realization that you don’t have to rush into this vortex of AI hype. You can take your time and methodically plan out what makes sense for your business, and you’re not really losing ground. The hype cycle has been so loud and so ubiquitous that it has drowned out rational logic and sound reasoning.”
Gogia echoed those sentiments. “The fever of the initial hype cycle has passed,” he said. “The technology is still powerful, but it is being evaluated with a clearer eye and steadier hand. Vendors are adjusting to this new rhythm because they recognize that trust built slowly is more valuable than revenue booked quickly.”
“[Organizations that] embrace this maturity, on both sides of the table, will shape the next decade of enterprise AI in a way that is sustainable, credible, and rooted in operational reality rather than marketing velocity,” he said. What is being witnessed currently by Microsoft and others, he noted, “is not a loss of momentum. It is a shift from performance to substance. It is a market discovering that progress in AI comes from discipline, not drama. And for the first time in this cycle, that discipline is starting to show.”
Updated to correct Keith Kirkpatrick’s surname.
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