#5 MCT, MVP, E7 and WTF?! 😳

In the latest episode of Unresolved Dependencies, we're going clucking mad over acronyms. What is an MCT? How can you become one, and why should you? Does GPT 5.5 make Copilot better than before? What are the benefits of the new E7 license from Microsoft? And will everyone just be saying "A365" now instead of "Agent 365"? Listen in to hear our answers and thoughts on all of these topics, and to find out how well done Seb likes his steaks 🔥🥩 A very tasty edition of the podcast, we hope you agree.

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Email us your Joe's Travel Guess: hello@unresolveddependencies.com

Connect with us on LinkedIn!

Joe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joejgriffin/

Sebastian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siebersebastian/

Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/company/unresolved-dependencies

Links / Shout-Outs

Microsoft Certified Trainer Overview

FY2027 MCT Onboarding Changes Announcement

GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

Introducing Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite

Microsoft 365 E7 Pricing

Overview of Microsoft Agent 365

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do the chicken. Do the chicken. Do the chicken. Do the chicken.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

I think you're the chicken at some point.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Yeah, maybe in like a previous life I was like a like a chicken. And now I'm just trying to manifest again, you know, as my natural favorite results.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Yes, that would really explain a lot. And with that, um, hi, and welcome to a new episode of Unresolved Dependencies Podcast. My name is Sep, and with me I have Joe today. And uh yeah, you are seem to be in a place where internet is not your favorite thing, right? So how's it going? You're not at home. It's gonna be interesting.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

I'm in a yeah, surprisingly, I'm not at home. I mean, who would have guessed that, you know? Uh yeah, I'm in a hotel room currently in uh cologne. Um, but the hotel Wi-Fi has not been too great, so I'm currently hot spotting, but uh yeah, the this this may we may need to re-record this whole episode, who knows? Um, but let's let's let's pray the same.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Let's see.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean we've got StreamYard here, we should be recording things locally. Um, so yeah, let's just let's just YOLO, hope for the best.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Let's see how how you get this works today. So um if you ever hear this or see that on YouTube, then very appreciate it. If not, then maybe this will never be see the sunlight with that. Yeah, I think last time we talked about um uh at Color Cloud, we were in person today. More back to the old setup with Joe traveling, me at home, actually reporting from like on vacation. So I'm literally had a day off today, and I have the whole week off. So I um I'm very nice, very, very fortunate you are.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

This is how committed you are to this whole endeavor.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

I really appreciate it to the podcast, not to my work.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, work work is just forget about work, podcasts. Yeah, gotta focus on podcasts.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

It's not not dying, not that my my work is banging the bills, but yeah. No, I actually I I I I I thought I didn't have any major appointments or things this week, so I I I took some occasion. Turns out there's a podcast to record. There's like a three-hour meeting right after this, just for me to sit there and explaining to my girlfriend, like, yeah, um, I have to work. Um I can top that.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

I can top that. I've got a four-hour meeting after this, and it's supposed to be an accommodate in the UK today, so yeah. So to take a three-hour meeting and just damp my face, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Vanish, just vanish in your self-disbelief with like this little rookie thingy over there. Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. I mean, you're traveling, so I I think you already spoiled a little bit where you are at the moment. Um, maybe people can guess literally why you are traveling, because I think there is that answer.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

So that was actually going to be my answer to the question my question to say, where am I traveling to next? So yeah, we're gonna have to look very carefully about yeah, yeah, that's good. Okay, but we've got I can think of a new clue uh because I know eventually where I'm gonna be going, so I can make up something uh on the spot. Um, but yeah, for those of you who are interested in the previous answers, we didn't get around to them during episode four. Uh the inbox has been overflowing. Literally, we have to, you know, we had to go and clear down all the emails. So the responses have been hot.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Um, we didn't get any responses because we had to buy more storage to buy more so heavily that was used, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Exactly, exactly. But we we remain hopeful. So if you are interested in getting involved, it's hello at unresolved dependencies.com. You know, guess where I'm going to be next, uh, and we may give you a nice little shout-out on the episode. And there's also some vague promises of us ordering some merch merch and sending it out to you at some point.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

So yeah, I'm sure we need to do some stickers, yeah. Yeah, with like our growing, growing viewer and listener people, um, community. We definitely need to to see like how what we can do on the beloved sticker game across the community to as well supply our fans and um regular listeners because it's already episode five, so we it's um it's closed to be serious, right now.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Exactly. So if you're sold by those vague promises, you know what to do. Email hello at this dependencies to get your clue. So the answer for episode one uh was York uh in the UK, um, also known as Jorvik, uh back in the days of the Vikings, hence the clue there. Uh the second clue was Hamburg, the most colourful event. Color cloud, obviously, if you've been regularly listening.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Oh, I I was there, I was there. You were there, yeah. So yeah, nice event, nice event, very great. But let's let's not talk about this one again.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Let's give it a year to settle.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Exactly, yeah. Uh, then the third clue was uh uh third answer was Munich, uh, was where I was next. We had a uh a lovely uh event down there uh in Munich. Um so always nice to be there. Uh and then the answer was fun.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

A fun fact, we we spent a whole week together and didn't manage to record an episode in person in Munich.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

I think by that point we were probably so sick of each other that we just thought it can be.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

I I think as well, I think this was too much of healthy friendship in like two less days. So the the amount of like hours and minutes and days seeing and talking to each other, um, perhaps has a limit. So we wanna be just just kidding. I I think I was just busy with like generating or like preparing like so many demos that I think there was no time in between.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

So yeah, I I I'm surprised you survived.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

There's still there's still a friendship here in this. There is, there is.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

I mean, this podcast is the only reason. Is it's our genuine effort to keep this friendship going, you know. So what can we say? Um, so yeah, so answering We're trying, we're trying. We're trying. We're trying so hard. Um, yeah, so the answer was Munich for the third set of clues, fourth, fourth set of clues. The answer was London. Uh uh Jenny D was a popular dish there. Trotter is from the famous uh UK sitcom only fools on horses. Um, so um, yeah, definitely would recommend you watch that if you at least understand something about the something about the UK. There it is there. And then we've got our clue for today. So the next city I'm going to be in is famous for its gingerbread, famous as for toys, uh, and also famous for uh being the seat uh of the Holy Roman Emperors back in the medieval age. What city am I going to be in next? Uh send your answer through to hello at unresolveddependencies.com. Uh and yeah, we will give you a shout out and maybe uh some vague promises of merch as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

I I see I know your traveling schedule because um I'm very informed human being. And I know where you're going to, so you don't want to spoil that. But actually, so how long do you will will you stay in this medieval nature of a beauty of a city? Because I'm we are traveling somewhere together, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

We are, we've got a uh internal event that we're sort of traveling on, but yeah, I'll be there for maybe about sort of four or five days uh before that starts.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Okay, so you're there all week.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah, so the plan is I'm gonna head down rather than heading back to the UK and then flying out again. I just I'm gonna take a I do a nice little road trip here from uh Cologne down to Nuremberg.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

So you're telling me you're skipping the flights, which you could get some more extra miles and more um launch tickets and more upgrades to just explore German autobahn. Pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

So I I've trade I've traded all that nice stuff the in-flight food, all that lounge food for you know driving across Germany. So I must be insane, clearly. I must be insane.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Is is sorry so much. So we really need to keep this going to not make him our hostile of Lufthansa and British railways.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

And all of that, but speaking of lounge food, um, the question on everyone's lips, I'm sure, is okay, what has Sebastian been eating since last time? So do you please tell me what?

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yeah, um basically the I can I haven't snapped a picture this time, so I will upload something on our Instagram channel for that. Um it's not something I cooked because my girlfriend decided to cook something, and I had her lawn there at the office, so I already had to commute like an hour back to to our place, and so she decided to surprise me with some um fried rice um with some um Asian vegetables, and as well um some steak on top of it, so so very nice, and I think there was a fried egg involved as well, somewhere in between that um kind of delicious meal. So that was very nice, and as well, it's um was a nice surprise because she didn't tell me about this and just forgot, yeah. I just wanted to have steak, so I thought what could be nice with it, and she thought, like, yeah, Seth will be happy with that, and right she was. So, yeah, fried rice with ac and steak was the last of um the meals I enjoyed. Um, yeah, so this is what's they've definitely ranks very high on the list, even though I had some critiques on the steaks, but like we keep this private to not um disturb the relationship more.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yeah, I mean that that could that could literally you know break up the entire relationship. Okay, oh yeah, it was it was it was it was it was a a medium rare rather than medium, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

It's it was rather medium than medium rare, I think those were okay. She she doesn't like it like any kind of pinkish, but I like I'm a sucker for this one, so uh I'm I really like it if it's like medium rare and more rare than medium, so I uh yeah, but but yeah, for for next time we will figure something out because maybe for next time already do have my barbecue, so let's see.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Um yes, updates fly um Germany and Scroll must never be sort of torn apart, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

With with me being on vacation, it's not like that I just sit down and play with the dogs, it's also me putting some work on in the house. So the updates are flying, and I hope as well we will see some um delicious barbecue made meal soon, so that I can get my hands on this one. Well, let's see. We'll still take some weeks because first there is so much other work to do. Depending on like or like talking about other work, um, so I know from Joey um that you're an MVP, so Microsoft's most valuable professional, but also you put in more work on the side besides just being an MVP and um contributing to this beautiful uh community with your presence at every community event out there. You're also something that's called an MCT, right? And we we just had it like a few days ago, where like was like, why is he doing all of the certifications again? And I thought, like, what is going on? Should I do more certifications? Because I'm really not that motivated in terms of doing certifications. But maybe you can tell us a bit more about what is an MCT, sorry, not MVP, but MCT. And why do you do so many certifications? And how many do you have?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah, so it might it might surprise this audience that okay, yeah, I do actually have a job. I do actually work, I don't just spend all of my life doing these conferences.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, but I think like attending a conference is your job, is your day-to-day.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

No, no, no, no. I actually have a real job which requires me to work and focus and actually, you know, actually brings money in, you know. I mean, I know this is this is gonna like you know break everyone's like reality, and you know, there's gonna be people screaming in the street, streets and all this sort of stuff. But yeah, just to set the scene there very clearly.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Um I think newspapers are out already.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

So exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

This is like great end is near scene from The Simpsons. Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

It's crazy, but yeah, so and and so yeah, I do actually have a job, and and one part of my job is doing is doing training quite a bit. So customer training, training for um for various different sort of organizations and things like that. Um, and to be a trainer in our sort of world, it helps to be what's referred to as a Microsoft certified trainer or an MCT. Um, so that basically is kind of like uh an official kind of blessing from Microsoft in terms of okay, you have met sort of minimum requirements in terms of certifications being held, uh, you've gone through kind of a bit of a um a thorough assessment or training, but I'll get back to um my own experience on that one and give you my thoughts on that. And then after you've done that, you can then go and deliver these courses. So, if, for example, you are looking to sit an exam, maybe for example, the PL400 Power Platform Developer Exam, one of the things that you can go and do is a Microsoft official course. And one of those Microsoft official courses will get you prepared for the exam. Uh, and it might be that you have uh someone like me uh there as your kind of sort of trainer. Um, so one of the reasons why I do so many certifications uh is uh well, number one, in order to be able to teach the course, you need to have the relevant certification um to give you that kind of credibility um when teaching things. Um so I think at the moment I've got about close to 50 certifications that might be inactive. Yeah. So, you know, I'm just like, you know, you know, okay. I saw I saw what Thanos was doing. I was like, I was like, screw that. I'm just I'm gonna go the extra mile and I'm just gonna collect you know all of these, all of these exams because you know, all of these modifications exactly, yeah, exactly. Um so 50. I have like eight or something.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Just in a comparison, only an eight is already something where I'm like, I'm super proud of, and he's like 15.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah, certifications get a bit of a mixed review, should we say? Um, in our world, they're very sort of important because uh if you're working in the partner space, it's one of the ways that Microsoft kind of validates your sort of status, um, and means that you can get these nice shiny badges and um solution destinations, all this sort of good stuff. Um, I found the exam route quite useful in the early days as well, in terms of I was trying to get more into the industry and having a few exams under my belt talking about the fact that I'd gone and taken those exams, I'd spent my spare time, in some cases my own money, actually going and sitting those exams. It was quite a useful thing to me kind of for me to kind of weave into like an interview sort of scenario um and to maybe hopefully demonstrate to you know an employer, okay, look, I am serious about this, you know, I've done all of this type type stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

So I think so you're certificated your way up to the top, basically, from uh I I I dressed for the job that I wanted and I got there, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

So it kind of does sort of work. Um he's traveling for business, okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

I see.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

So now I'm training.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

So the guy training, yeah, training, training, traveling, training, traveling.

unknown 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. I'm the trainer now, you know. Um so yeah, so the MCT, I got the MCT designation during um it was during COVID. Um, and I have to sort of say that I probably shouldn't have got the MCT designation at the time. Um there were two factors that worked in my kind of favour. The first was the fact that they completely waived the application fee. So it meant that um anybody who met the requirements could sort of apply and not have to pay a penny or a cent. Um so that was one factor. And then the second one was that um in order to be able to get in at the time, all you required was just a customer reference. Um, so I'd done some training for end customers. I'd asked them to give me sort of a reference from there, and then from there now they um uh that I was then sort of um deemed to meet the criteria as it was at the time um in order to become an MCT. Uh thankfully they've changed that now, uh, and there's going to be some changes again sort of soon, um, which might be of interest to anyone who is interested in becoming an MCT because the way in which you do it will become a bit more streamlined. And also those who were an MCT in the past sort of three years and maybe have lost it, there's now uh an easier route for you to get back in to the program as well. Um so I'll share a link in the uh in the in the sort of session notes here for a bit more details on that sort of post. Uh uh and there'll be more news on that in the next sort of kind of sort of few weeks or so. Um so the hope is that yeah, once that sort of happens, then we'll be able to then um we'll be able to then sort of talk about that in a bit more detail.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Yeah, I think that could be super interesting for a lot of people just to like understand what is sort of coming with that kind of MCP title, what what what is the uh prerequisite for that, what do you need to do, what is expected, what is it's not something people may like to enjoy or not, could be as well. So that um this is something people I could imagine that like people, oh yeah, I want to be a trainer, because um that's maybe still a new career path as well. Umber path to like skill yourself up into um into this like expert role for certain topic you have in mind. But like how how is this going? Like, um do you get done just trainings assigned, or what is what is happening behind closed doors if you're allowed to tell to talk about this, of course.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yeah, I have to be some of it is covered by and you have to be sort of careful, but it's a mixture of sort of opportunities. I'll get reach um people from training providers from other organizations, they'll sort of ask for my um my sort of services as a as a subject matter expert. Um their words, not mine, you know. So or is it or is it the words of of co-pilot? Who knows these days? You know, who what can you believe these days, you know, truly, you know, this is the world we're living in. Um, but yes, I'd like to think that having been an MCT for gosh about six years now, uh hopefully um I'm at least um competent. Yeah, so the the MCT program does offer a lot of benefits um potentially for those who are interested. Um, I think as well in terms of the I think there's also gonna be a real demand for these kind of training skills because at the end of the day, people still need to know about the fundamentals. Um, they still need to know in terms of okay, how a certain technology works, need to know in terms of what Dataverse can and can't do. You know, um prompting and you know, working with these AI models can get us um a lot of the way forward. But if we don't know what we're asking for, we don't know what a technology can support, then we're gonna find ourselves in pretty uh hot water quite quickly. So I hope that there's a place for MCTs in the future. Um, so I would very much encourage others to look at it as well.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Yeah, I think this could be quite interesting. What also is interesting, I think, is um something we discovered recently um around um copilots, because like as you know, there is a new model in the market and everyone goes crazy for that. But so far, um the experiences with GPT 5.5 were like not where we expect them to be, right? So at least for me, so at least when I when I like to tell or I'm allowed to tell about say I had pretty um a lot of like disconnects basically with GPT 5 in copilot uh or gpt 5.5 in copilot, and really had issues with it, like the answers were not that good, and and really just like got back to to our lower model. Did you have the same experience? Because you're also using the the pro model, right? So you're using you're paying actually for a subscription.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah, well, I mean, we did have some fun with it. I think maybe the more eagle-eyed of our followers on Instagram would have noticed a few cheeky little GPT 5.5 generated images on there recently.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Yeah, the images are great, yeah, but like overall the answers, I I have the feeling it's like not serving the hype at the point.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah, so I think it's sort of um some of the image generation stuff looks kind of sort of interesting. I think it's always the case whenever these new kind of large language models come onto the sort of the scene, it's sort of like everyone gets really super excited. They all sort of say, Oh, it's the best thing since sort of sliced bread, you know, all this sort of good stuff. Um, I've been using it um a bit for some sort of work stuff and some not so work stuff, the new model on the chat GPT side. It seems to be pretty good. It's still um quite sort of chatty. Um, it can be a bit too sort of chatty sometimes, um, but seems to do a good job based on the user prompt. And actually, I I hadn't been into chat GPT for kind of a while underneath the hood. Um so I spent a bit more time sort of looking at you know some of the more recent things like memories, uh the personalization features and stuff like that. So it was good to have an opportunity to maybe go a bit deeper into that and just sort of see in terms of okay, what's actually uh what's actually happening underneath the hood here um a bit more. Um but I think you tried GPT 5.5 with co pilot um on the work tenants, and you had some. Interesting experiences.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Yeah, it's it's so as I mentioned, it it kind of broke up. So I uh in like I don't know, three out of five cases just lost connection or lost the context in most of the cases. It was like really not giving me results I could work with. And then as well with the um new consumption cost, for example, in in GitHub Copolit, for example, um, and as well, like more changes in that direction. I I really see like that. This is like not just always the best way to just jump on the latest model and call call out the older ones. Um, and also for for some demos recently and as well for some some products, we're actually using I'm still using GPT 5 uh 4.1, even like that. So it's a very much old and like rusty model if you want to compare it to like what is possible today, but with the European enforcements or the pure um data boundaries that we, anyways, um sticking with with the GPT models, sometimes like the the model where you you know what to expect from, and the one which you can handle the best is maybe as well the best model for you to work with, because you can rely on that and you always get like the same kind of answers, which is pretty interesting to see this kind of loan cough from like jumping to the latest model in in in a second and just forget about like all of the other models that were like yesterday because they're all shit now, and everything that's new is like this is the best one, and everyone else can cannot keep up with that. Um that that's pretty interesting to see like how how quick people are just jumping on new stuff with all like proper testing or evaluations. So that's pretty interesting to see, and as well for us in in a lot of cases, um not the best choice, actually.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Yeah, no two models are the same. This is the conclusion I've come to. But I mean, it's going to be interesting. You you've seen quite a bit of a few changes on the GitHub Copilot side in terms of some of the now moving to a more consumption-based sort of model, now becoming arguably a bit more expensive, particularly for some of the uh nicer models, you know, flour to work and stuff like that. You know, so I just wonder whether, okay, um, you know, we have different sort of life people just go for go to these different large language models for different sort of needs, you know, so sort of our you know, really uh super rich and super cool kind of developers go to Claude, which is like their Ferrari or their porches, and there's stuff with our Toyota or Skoda sort of you know, GPT, chat GPT opening I think.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

You're a scoda or GPT.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Hey, scoders are really good. Scoders are really good.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Yeah, cords are really good. So it's like when you're like playing that down, like okay, you can use it, but why is it?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

It's just yeah, Scoda's basically just an Audi, but with you know, in terms of their you know, rich history or that sort of stuff. So there's nothing wrong with a Skoda.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

But if you've got to be a good one, there's there's nothing wrong, no. Yeah, but it's just like that. You you play it down, like okay, uh, this is like this is not a car I want to be seeing in driving around Germany.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

You don't want to be seen driving Octavia around Germany?

SPEAKER_02 25:17

I you you gave me this impression that this is happening to you.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

No, no, we're we're we're we're a Skoda friendly zone here.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

We're always friendly. Of course, of course we are. Um yeah, but this was not only so yeah, the GitHub um related uh GitHub co-pilot related licensing changes. So from first of June, um they will change to um a consumption-based model and as well pump up the um I always forget those words, the um the factor on these um on these models. So I think currently GPT 5.5 and opus are on a factor 7 or something, 7.7.5. And with the new model, they will jump to to a factor like 27, which is um definitely something which you will see in um your cost increase for uh tokens and credits and whatever they want to call it next week. So that was pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

But but it's gonna be interesting. I think I shared an image with you over the weekend, I think, as a bit of a sort of a joke, but we're gonna be now going through this kind of cycle, okay. AI's become too expensive. You know, you walk into the board, right? Board members, I've got this brilliant idea. Okay, we're gonna stop using these large language models, we're gonna hire junior developers, and everyone's just like bravo, bravo, bravo, going to happen, going to happen somewhere for sure. Yeah, so it'd be interesting to see how things twist and turn around all of this. You know, the cost factor is definitely starting to bite a bit more. Uh, you know, so we're gonna have to make some investments here in order to get the good functionality, particularly as well if we're wanting to manage all of these agents in the wild, uh, which uh now with the new Agent 365 and E7 is uh is a hot topic, Sebastian.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Yes, so there's also some more news on the licensing side. Unresolved dependency, still licensing podcasts, yeah, not going to happen, but still um actually I'm I'm answering so many licensing questions lately, so there's really a lot, and I I feel like I'm um I I build up some confidence on that, which is usually not the case in like working 12 years with Microsoft licensing, but yeah, there's no you don't want to be known as licensing guy, you know, that's not because in all of these trick questions kind of like or have this and okay, um, and this doesn't that, and it's like awful. Um, yeah, so as I mentioned, there's a new license, e7, so a microsoft 365 e7 license. Um, basically, um, I think they called it like the frontier suite. So all of this frontier program is like everything that's new, and like you can opt in for every all the new fancy stuff. But actually, um the e7 license, the new on top of e5, I think, was the one before, or is this still the slower one? Um, adds for ex of course the M365 copilot license. You get everything that's in there in e5, so all of that Microsoft 365, security, identity, compliance, enterprise, create productivity, which is I think office and stuff like that. Um, all of that. Um, then you have the enter suite, so all of this um identity and network access control and all of that. And what's new now? You get as well agent 365, and that's basically your control plan plane, plan, planel, panel, plane, plane, yeah, panel. Yeah, it's it's your control area for governing, um, observing and securing all the AI agents in your organization. Um, sits in the Mac, so Microsoft Admin Center, not in the Power Platform Admin Center, where you, for example, have features like the inventory, but um basically sits on the Microsoft um side of the administration and basically gives you visibility into the agency environment, um how they're used, um, basically what they're using, any any risks or something like that. Um, you can as well establish guardrails for agents and people working on these um agents, and as well, um, you can um secure the agents' identities because every one of them gets like your um entra ID um entrance, and basically you can track what is happening there, so you can prevent data oversharing, leaks, all of this nasty stuff you don't want to deal with. And I think this is now since uh GA since the first of May, which is a public holiday in my place, but never mind. And I think it starts at $99 per user per month, so it basically adds with this agent for 65, and I do have an opinion on that, to be honest. So it's not very often that I have like a harsh opinion of things, but why do I need to pay extra for agents 365 when I want to control agents and especially agents from our third-party providers, like can, for example, bring in agents from AWS, for example. So, especially for companies who are willing to use the power platform and using Microsoft and administrating everything in their space, um, but still have maybe some other environments or other tools they're using today, they need to pay extra just to have access to this governance and to have like this insights, which I would wish this is just like part of the M65 co-pilot license. But maybe I'm just uh too dreamful of vicious to um to think, yeah, well that it should make sense. If I buy a license, you also buy the governance and security and the admin access to it. But now I apparently need to buy this as well extra.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

But I guess to to maybe play devil's advocate and defend a bit here, you know, simplicity from a SKU standpoint, I think is really important because we just get lost in all of these licensing conversations, having to buy E3 but co-pilot on top. So having a consolidated SKU where an opportunity to save a bit of money is always going to be quite good as well. I think as well when we look at maybe the value that the Microsoft offering is able to sort of provide as well, you know, security and the governance is always the kind of a top talking point, you know. So why wouldn't you want to monetize that? We've kind of seen that already on the power platform side, you know, the requirement for you know licensed users to be able to work with managed environments, you know, uh this is, I guess, the you know, the value that the Microsoft solution could sort of bring, you know, and particularly for bigger enterprises, you know, I guess the theory is okay, well, if they're interested, then they're gonna pay for it, you know. And you know, I think when it comes to the Agent 365 stuff, you know, the roadmap there I think is going to look particularly nice and you know, potentially acting as a really good way of allowing us to control these different multi-vendor agents that are built together and to you know make sure we we've basically got a rein on all of that.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

So yeah, but but still you want to know what happens in your organization when you're using AI. I think this is like the main part of what I mean, yeah, of course, earning money as a partner and as Microsoft side, but but still I I want to see that be like out of the box. I just can see what happens. I don't I don't need to pay for annoying administrative access to your power platform admin center. Do I? I just can do this with regular licensing and access control.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

I mean, in a way, you can still get that visibility because at the end of the day, all the agents that you create, at least on your own tenant, are going to be in there and enter ID. So there's nothing stopping you from creating your own sort of it's that classic, I guess, build versus buy type of uh mentality. And I guess as well, the additional benefit that agent 365 gives is that you know the agents built elsewhere as well, you know, having that nice layer around all of that. That's a nice squeaky, squeaky, squeaky toy noise. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Oh yeah. Um I just found if if if we can hear this, but yeah, my dog is literally playing around with the ball, and I think he found it right now.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

And yeah, it's not it's it's not Sebastian playing with a toy, it's not me.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

It's not I I wish I wish I had their life because they have the best life ever. And um, yeah, they're with me in this special episode. Um so one is chewing on her on her bone, and the other one is playing with her squishy toy, so they have a good time. Um, and I think we also had a good time for the last half an hour. It was good seeing you. You wanted to add something. I'm I'm I'm desperate to hear any more comments from your side about squishy toys.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

I was just I was just gonna say that uh just we don't want rumors starting that okay, as soon as Agent 365 starts, then you know you need to start chewing on those uh toys for comfort. You know, that's not good.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

No, no, no, no, no, no, you use something else for that. You can stay with your regular licensing comfort toy.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

And can you please no he doesn't want to stop, so it's actually him playing with it, so yeah, there's no we'll keep we'll keep we'll keep this in or we'll try and reduce the noise on a little bit. You know, post-production magic is is always uh amazing.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

No, we want to have the same experience. Oh, he's gone. So yeah, I catched him and now the toy's gone. Sorry, um, that he can go back to his toy, I think. Um be closing this kind of episode um for today. Um thank you so much, uh Joe, for the insights about the MCT. Um, as well on your opinions about uh uh ChGPT5.5 and as well the agents 3605 license and e7 license. So I think very packed um session. Just for for the sake of the last moments, anything to add from your side?

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Uh I just hope the weather improves here in Cologne. It's got a bit bit rainy now.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

I I think it starts raining um in Germany the next days because I have some I had some um workers here today finish up um some outside work, and they literally wanted to continue next week with some um indoor work, but then they now switch this to tomorrow because apparently it should or it's announced that it will rain, and I think um it's heavily needed here because I didn't I don't know when last time I saw rain.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

It must be weeks or months, even it has been a very sunny couple of days, so hopefully a bit of rain to rehydrate things, then back to some nice um shun wetter in Deutschland.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

See so it's not likely you carry that it's always rain, but not always nice weather as well. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

So leave it there, rain for good weather. So good to chat as always. Hope you found this podcast useful, and we'll see you in the next one.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Right. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Like, comment, share, subscribe, whatever you want and need to do to make this thing growing. Um, we need to finance Joy's uh first class tickets uh to go around the world to see you in person at various community events. So somehow this needs to be funded. Um, this is why we actually um designed this podcast to make this happen. So, yeah, tell your friends, uh tell your co-workers that this is a thing, and then um, with that, see you in two weeks because this is our schedule every two weeks on a Monday. New episode of Unresolved Dependencies with Joey and me. Take care, see you. Take care, bye bye.