Microsoft Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory, is a cloud-based service that manages access to various resources of an organization. It is like a digital passport for your organization, ensuring that the right people have appropriate access to the resources they...
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Microsoft 365
Windows 10 End of Life Approaches, Upgrade Sooner Rather than Later
Windows 10 is approaching its end of life on October 14, 2025. Microsoft will stop releasing security patches after that date. Many clients have already upgraded to Windows 11 through the self-update mechanism provided by Microsoft or have purchased new assets and had...
Surprise Announcement: Bing Chat Enterprise for Business
Microsoft launched the new version of Bing in February of 2023; on July 18, 2023, they announced Bing Chat Enterprise. Photo courtesy of Microsoft. The company cites corporate customers’ thoughts for this launch: “we’ve heard from many corporate customers who are...
Copilot Pricing, Additional Capabilities Announced by Microsoft | Updated October 2023
Photo courtesy of Microsoft At Microsoft Inspire 2023, the annual event in which Microsoft partners get a look at what is coming in the next year for Microsoft, Microsoft finally announced pricing for Copilot: $30 per user per month for users who are at subscription...
How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot to Increase Company Productivity
Microsoft 365 Copilot, used from Microsoft Microsoft has become an innovating tech giant again in 2023, first by unveiling a new Bing that is powered by AI and machine learning and continuing to put the new tech of Artificial Intelligence in their suite of...
Microsoft patches a zero-day vulnerability from October
In an update released December 2022, Microsoft patched a zero-day vulnerability that was exploited. A zero-day vulnerability refers to potential weak points in an update that could be exploited the day it is released. The fear is that someone could learn to exploit...
M365 price increase reminder
We’d like to take this opportunity to remind clients about the price increases to all Microsoft 365 packages on a monthly term and commitment effective July 1, 2022. We wrote about this in our February blog post, please refer to that article for further...
Important Microsoft 365 Update
Microsoft has notified partners that they are implementing a new commerce experience starting January 2022. They had also announced in August 2021 that a change with pricing to certain subscription packages was coming in 2022. SpireTech has been tracking these changes...
M365 subscription billing prorate policy changes
Due to changes in policy with our vendors, we can no longer credit Microsoft 365 services for partial months or partial years. This is a change in the cost structure to us, and we are simply passing these costs on to our customers. Reassignment of licenses are...
New AI converts Word Documents to Powerpoint
Microsoft recently released a new feature for M365 that automatically converts word documents to PowerPoint presentations. Why is this useful? Perhaps you have prepared a proposal for a client that you’re going to be reviewing in Teams. Instead of...