Microsoft is planning something BIG in 2025

A colleague reached out to me this week to discuss the retirement of Viva Goals. Turns out a lot of news has happened lately around the Viva Suite. Goals is going away and Viva Insights is being included with M365 Copilot licenses. Viva is evolving quickly lately, and it may be something I keep a closer eye on.

Microsoft is definitely trying to increase the value of the M365 Copilot licenses to increase adoption. That’s definitely why SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) was included as well through a recent announcement. That’s why I’m telling everyone they need to start learning SAM and planning to integrate it in their environments.

That’s not all, though. During a recent public Microsoft product demo of SharePoint Premium, I asked Ian Story, Principal Group Product Manager of SharePoint Premium, when they would be removing the “Syntex” references in the documentation (and parts of the UI). He had a really interesting answer.

It was more of a non-answer, actually. He hinted that something was happening with the branding, but didn’t say what that was. He called out that there’s a reason we didn’t hear the name SharePoint Premium or see any sessions about it during Microsoft Ignite. What is coming?? Is there a big change happening during 2025?

There’s no way they’ll discontinue the products because it’s Pay-As-You-Go billing. That really means that there’s no cost unless customers use it. In addition, I believe every single feature is powered by AI. That tells me that the features coincide with Microsoft’s efforts to embed AI in everything they do.

But the question remains. What will Microsoft announce in 2025 (or sooner) for SharePoint Premium. I’ll keep a sharp look out and let you know what I can find out (without breaking NDA, of course 😊). Make sure to forward this email to a friend who needs to stay up to date as well!