At 50, Microsoft Makes a Midlife Pivot

As Microsoft turns 50, you might think the megacorporation would unveil some major upgrades to its core software. You would be wrong.

The venerable giant has published roadmaps of what it plans to do for the rest of the year, and very little of it has to do with the mainstays that have defined the company for years: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. At least not with their core functionality.

Instead, the focus is on generative AI assistants: Copilots and agents, with Copilots designed to answer questions and help you perform a task and agents doing the tasks for you. Microsoft is developing a range of these helpers, aimed at many of the individual applications within 365. Expect specific Copilots for most of the applications within the Office suite and more. The company plans to beef up its AI support for enterprise applications, too, along with a bundle of different upgrades.

Here are some of the changes Microsoft has in store for 2025.

Microsoft 365: A Spread of AI Options

The Microsoft 365 roadmap (as I write this) lists 682 features in development, with another 141 rolling out. That sounds like a lot, though a bunch of these features are pretty minor. And few new features are planned for the core productivity apps in the 365 suite, other than those related to Copilot and agents. The big add-on to the central products—and the one that has gotten the most attention—is Python support in Excel. It’s already rolling out in some versions, and due for others this month.

What is coming for 365 is a spread of AI options. The Microsoft 365 Copilot alone accounts for 151 new features, plus another 17 rolling out. Beyond Copilot, in fact, Microsoft hasn’t talked much about new features for Windows itself.

Right now, the Copilot has tools for things including creating presentations from PDF files in PowerPoint, taking emails and meetings into account when drafting content in Word, and creating banners for documents with Copilot and Designer. Later this year, Microsoft plans important changes, such as better ways of creating a presentation from a Word file and using Copilot to prioritize your inbox.

Microsoft is also concentrating on newer applications. The Purview data-management and control system includes 191 new features, the largest of any category, while the Viva employee-experience software is getting 97.

Microsoft is also continuing its push with Teams. The software has 79 new features in development, with another 59 rolling out. In the next few months, we should see better support for Windows devices in Teams rooms, the ability to share notes to Outlook, and live transcription, among other things.

Microsoft Azure: Slow But Steady

In many respects, the cloud-computing service Azure has replaced Windows as Microsoft’s key infrastructure platform, but it only has 123 features in development, almost all of which have been listed for more than a year. Another 2,600 are still in preview (which means not completely finished but rolling out to some but not all user); some have been sitting there for many years.

Azure, simply put, is getting mature, so there aren’t a ton of improvements ready to roll. True, Microsoft does regularly announce new compute instances—virtual machines—and it continues to update others. But the basic functionality of things like computing and storage doesn’t seem to be changing much.

The features that are listed for Azure center on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS). But they don’t include newer cloud offerings like Fabric, Power BI, or Power Platform, which are covered in separate roadmaps. Almost 500 features for databases are listed as being in preview, including a number of enhancements to the Cosmos DB.

And, of course, there’s AI. Microsoft lists 140 of these upgrades on the way, but all are in preview. They cover everything from Copilot for Azure itself to Microsoft Copilot for Security.

Microsoft Fabric and Power BI: Where Copilots Shine

Copilots are a much stronger presence in the roadmap for Fabric and PowerBI, Microsoft’s data and analytics platform and business intelligence tool.

For instance, Fabric is getting a bunch of AI-driven features, such as a Copilot for Data Warehouse that allows users to query data using natural language. Copilots are also being developed for applications like Data Science and Real-Time Intelligence. In addition to Copilots, Fabric is due to receive other tools that make it easier to manage and analyze real-time data.

The Copilot for Power BI, meanwhile, is due for new features such as the ability to automatically generate summaries of report subscriptions delivered via email. 

Also on the way: improvements to visualization tools and standardizing on some open-data formats such as Parquet. Upgrades for the data services will make it easier for Fabric Data Warehouse to ingest data into Data Warehouse, while OneLake will be able to more easily access data stored in other locations and formats.

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform: Agents Take Center Stage

For Microsoft’s Dynamics 365, which covers enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), again AI Copilots and Agents take center stage.

Earlier this month, Microsoft released two Copilots for Sales. First, there’s Sales Agent, which gathers information from a swath of places—CRM, company price sheets, the web, and even Microsoft 365 data like emails—to research customers, set up meetings, and draft messages. Sales Chat gives sales representatives practical takeaways from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails, and the web.

Other AI assistants on the way will help out in many specialized areas like customer service and finance. Watch for features like improved capabilities for handling self-service customer calls and features that speed up purchase-order updates based on incoming emails. AI offerings are also in the offing for Power Platform (Copilots for Power Automate, and Power Apps) and Copilot Studio (the ability to use prebuilt agents as a starting point for Copilot creation, the ability to use Teams chats as knowledge sources, and new features for testing and debugging actions).

Microsoft Windows: Are Copilot+ PCs Ready to Take Off?

Last month, Microsoft released a roadmap for Windows itself, largely focused on features that are part of its Copilot+ PCs initiative. This includes features such as the long-promised Recall, which stores snapshots of everything you do on your hard drive so you can search it, and Click To-Do, which identifies text and images on the screen and suggests actions you can take. Both of these are now in Preview for some members of the Windows Insider program.

Other things coming for Copilot + PCs include improved Windows Search. Most of the new features for older machines are relatively minor, although I’m looking forward to seeing simpler “top cards” designed to give a quick view of your PC’s key specifications on the About page.

The 50-Something Pivot

As you can see, Microsoft’s emphasis—and indeed the emphasis of the whole software industry—has changed over the years. In its earliest years, the company focused on software languages, then moved to focus on Windows and core office functions such as word processing and spreadsheets. More recently, the emphasis moved to developing and building out enterprise applications and its Azure cloud platform. On its 50th anniversary, it now seems to have shifted to AI and Copilots, which seem to be the future—at least for now.

About Michael J. Miller

Former Editor in Chief

Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine,responsible for the editorial direction, quality, and presentation of the world’s largest computer publication. No investment advice is offered in this column. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

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