With Microsoft’s price increases landing on 1 July, UK businesses are facing a decision that’s easy to put off and expensive to get wrong: do you absorb the rising cost of your current licensing and keep bolting AI on piecemeal, or do you move to the new AI-ready E7 tier, lock in better value, and finally get a grip on the AI that’s already spreading across your systems?
It’s a bigger question than it first appears. Experts predict an approximate 700% increase in task-specific AI agents operating inside enterprise applications by the end of 2026. Yet most organisations still have no way to see, secure or govern the agents quietly appearing across their business.
From 1 July, standing still also gets more expensive. And many companies have no migration or governance plan in place to deal with either change.
To help you make sense of it, Kamran Bahdur, Chief Information Officer, and Fabio Carvalho, Head of AI, at FLR Spectron have set out five reasons businesses should be looking at this now, ahead of the price increase.
Five Reasons to Act Before July 1st
1. The E7 bundle offers better value for money
From 1st July, Microsoft 365 E5 rises from $57 (approx £45) to $60 (approx £47) per user and E3 from $36 (approx £28) to $39 (approx £31), while the new E7 remains at $99 (approx £78). For businesses that benefit from the full stack, the bundle offers even better value for money and now saves roughly 15% compared with buying the components separately.
2. AI agents are arriving faster than governance can keep up
E7’s Agent 365 gives IT teams a single way to observe, secure and govern every agent operating within an enterprise app. With 40% of enterprise apps set to run AI agents by year-end, the number of agents working inside the average business is climbing fast — and the controls to manage them often aren’t there yet.
3. Stronger cybersecurity comes as standard
Over the past year, enterprise environments have developed a fast-growing ‘shadow AI workforce‘ — AI agents that operate with privileges comparable to human administrators, but which security teams often can’t see. E7 folds Defender, Entra.
Suite and Purview into a single identity-and-security fabric, bringing those agents under proper control.
As Kamran Bahdur, Chief Information Officer at FLR Spectron says: “Every AI agent a business deploys is a new identity with access to company systems, and most are being brought inside far faster than anyone can secure them. Each one is effectively another door into the network, often holding privileges on a par with a senior administrator, and the majority are invisible to the security team. So as organisations rush agents into production, they’re widening their attack surface with every deployment. E7 addresses that risk head-on by providing businesses with Agent 365, which brings those agents under the same identity, monitoring and audit controls you’d apply to an employee so you can finally see them, govern them and switch them off.”
4. It reins in the risk of unapproved AI tools
Most employees are already using AI tools without IT approval, and every one of those tools is a potential route for sensitive data to leave the business. E7 brings sanctioned, governed AI in-house, reducing data leakage and GDPR exposure caused by your employees using unapproved AI tools.
5. It lets businesses scale AI as part of their infrastructure
Moving agents from pilot to full-scale deployment needs a unified identity, data and management at its foundation. E7 provides that foundation so AI can be rolled out safely and intentionally across your business.
Not all businesses need E7
Crucially, the team at FLR Spectron are clear that E7 isn’t the answer for every organisation. It’s a serious investment, and it only makes sense if you genuinely need the full stack and are ready to build on it.
Fabio Carvalho, Head of AI at FLR Spectron, adds: “There’s a big difference between trialling AI and running it. Most organisations are stuck at the first because the foundation underneath isn’t there: identity, data and management are scattered across half a dozen tools, and you can’t safely scale agents on top of that. E7 provides the foundation and infrastructure for businesses to embed AI into their operations, and while the price increase is certainly a prompt, it’s this future-proofing that is encouraging earlier adopters to make the move now.”
Need help choosing the right package for your business?
The 1st July price rise is a useful nudge, but it shouldn’t be the only thing driving your decision-making. The bigger question is whether your business has the visibility, security and structure to run AI safely as it scales, and whether E7 is the right way to get there for you.
Whether you want to weigh up the cost of moving versus staying put, get a handle on the AI agents already operating across your systems, or build the foundation to scale safely, our expert team are happy to help.