New Platform Launches in Open Beta to Help Organizations Right-Size Microsoft 365 Subscriptions and improve ROI

Specialized FinOps tool addresses the complex challenge of optimizing Microsoft 365 licensing costs through intelligent feature comparison and business outcome alignment

Unlock the Value of Microsoft 365: Are You Maximizing Your Investment?

Take a global consulting firm that invested heavily in Microsoft 365 for business transformation, deploying Copilot across their 5,000-employee organization to drive productivity and innovation. Six months later, they discovered a critical insight: while 800 users were actively leveraging advanced Copilot capabilities for custom solutions and complex workflows, the remaining 4,200 employees only needed basic AI assistance for everyday tasks. Their blanket licensing approach had created $1.6 million in unrealized value - not just overspend, but missed opportunities to reinvest those savings into strategic initiatives.

This scenario reflects a broader challenge: unlocking the true value of Microsoft 365 investments. The scale is staggering: Microsoft's Productivity and Business Processes segment alone generated $29.9 billion in Q3 2025, representing 43% of Microsoft's total quarterly revenue—highlighting the massive potential for organizations to optimize their productivity software investments and reinvest savings into business growth.

Microsoft 365 has become the backbone of modern workplace productivity, with over 400 million commercial seats worldwide. Yet despite this massive adoption, organizations struggle with a critical opportunity: maximizing the value of their Microsoft 365 investment by aligning capabilities with actual business needs.

Traditional licensing decisions take weeks or months of research, spreadsheet analysis, and stakeholder alignment—time that could be spent on strategic value creation. For FinOps practitioners managing cloud costs, Microsoft 365 often represents 15-30% of total SaaS spend, making optimization a significant opportunity to free up budget for innovation and growth initiatives.

The opportunity is accelerating rapidly. Microsoft 365 Copilot alone is projected to generate $2.6 billion in revenue for Microsoft in fiscal year 2025, with adoption expected to reach 18% penetration by FY26. This represents an entirely new layer of AI-powered capabilities that organizations can strategically deploy to maximize business value.

Adding to this opportunity: Microsoft is simultaneously introducing new licensing structures, including three-year terms for E3/E5 (launching June 1, 2025). These structural changes, combined with Copilot's rapid feature releases, create unprecedented opportunities for strategic optimization and value realization.

Today, Compare365.ai is an ongoing project designed to solve this exact challenge—enabling organizations to "unlock the value of Microsoft 365" by optimizing licensing investments in minutes rather than months.

Introducing Compare365: Your Intelligent Microsoft 365 Investment Advisor

The opportunity has never been greater. Microsoft 365 Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 11% year-over-year, with consistent innovation driving expanded capabilities that organizations can strategically leverage to maximize their technology ROI and unlock new business value.

Compare365 is the first platform purpose-built only for Microsoft 365 value optimization within the FinOps framework. The project transforms complex licensing decisions into strategic insights by providing comprehensive feature analysis across Microsoft 365 suites, helping organizations translate technology investments into measurable business outcomes and maximize ROI from their Microsoft 365 technology stack.

This strategic approach becomes essential as Microsoft's expanding AI capabilities create new opportunities for productivity gains and competitive advantage. Organizations can now leverage Copilot's advanced reasoning across finance, legal, and marketing workflows—but only when features are strategically deployed to roles that can maximize their impact, rather than broadly licensed across all users.

Strategic Market Context: With evolving licensing options including new CSP three-year terms and expanding “premium” suites (expanding beyond Microsoft 365 E5 suite), organizations have unprecedented opportunities to optimize their Microsoft 365 investments for maximum business impact. Compare365 enables rapid strategic analysis of complex licensing scenarios, transforming what traditionally required months of manual research into minutes of data-driven value discovery.

Platform Scale and Capabilities

Compare365.ai offers unprecedented coverage of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem:

300+ features compared across the Microsoft 365 suite portfolio - covering 95% feature coverage.
65+ products covered within the Microsoft ecosystem making it 3x more comprehensive than traditional licensing guides
24 Microsoft 365 suites covered, including “premium” Add-On suites that extend beyond Microsoft 365 E5.
9 business outcomes mapped to guide strategic decision-making

Dual Exploration Approaches: Choose Your Path

Suite-Led Exploration
Start with Microsoft's standard license bundles and discover which suite best matches your feature requirements. "Ideal for traditional license planning" and IT professionals who want to:

Compare Microsoft 365 suites feature-by-feature
Identify overlaps, gaps, and unique capabilities
See exactly what's included, what's an add-on, and what's not available

Outcome-Led Exploration
Begin with your business objectives and explore which products deliver the outcomes you need. "Perfect for strategic technology planning" that helps you:

Align suite selection with critical business outcomes and strategic goals
Evaluate Microsoft 365 suites based on how well they support strategic business objectives
Make licensing decisions that drive organizational priorities

Powerful Analysis Views

Compare365 provides multiple perspectives on Microsoft 365 licensing through specialized analysis views:

List View A comprehensive, organized cards of features grouped by product. Perfect for detailed feature-by-feature comparison and in-depth analysis.

Heatmap View A traditional matrix table representation of feature coverage across different Microsoft 365 suites, making it easy to "spot gaps and overlaps" at a glance.

Coverage Score View Quantified analysis showing how well each Microsoft 365 suite covers your selected features and requirements, enabling you to decide with confidence.

Business Outcome View Strategic analysis showing how well each Microsoft 365 suite supports specific business outcomes like "Boost Productivity," "Improve Security," and "Ensure Compliance." This view:
- Displays outcome coverage as percentage scores with visual progress bars for each suite
- Adapts to show either all features or only selected features when items are chosen
- Helps answer "Which suite best supports my strategic goals?" by mapping features to business objectives
- Perfect for C-level executives and decision makers who think in terms of business outcomes rather than technical features

Feature Distribution View Statistical breakdown showing the composition and spread of features across product groups and main products. This technical analysis:
- Uses visual bar charts to display feature counts and percentages by category
- Provides insights into feature density and helps identify which product areas dominate your selection
- Ideal for technical teams and IT administrators who need to understand the technical composition of their Microsoft 365 licensing investment

These complementary views provide both strategic and technical perspectives on the same underlying feature data, ensuring all stakeholders can analyze licensing decisions through their preferred lense.

The FinOps Context: Why SaaS Optimization Demands Specialized Tools

While general FinOps platforms excel at Microsoft cloud infrastructure targeting Azure. Compare365 is focused on SaaS complexity. The fundamental difference lies in what needs to be optimized:

When optimizing SaaS investments, organizations typically progress through three levels of sophistication.

The starting point for most tools is usage-based optimization, which relies on basic core Office 365 application usage data - such as last-accessed timestamps and identifying inactive users to highlight underutilized licenses and drive initial consumption analysis. This approach helps organizations quickly spot and reclaim licenses assigned to users who haven’t accessed the application in weeks or months, reducing immediate waste.
Building on this, feature-based optimization digs deeper by examining which specific features users actually engage with. Instead of just knowing whether a license is active, organizations can identify advanced capabilities and then ‘baseline’ what are being used, and which are not. This enables more precise right-sizing of license tiers, ensuring that users are assigned subscriptions that match their actual needs, rather than over-provisioning costly premium features across the board
The most advanced approach is outcome-aligned feature optimization, where SaaS investments are strategically mapped to business objectives.
Here, organizations leverage insights from usage and feature visibility, combined with AI-powered analytics, to ensure that every licensed capability supports a defined business outcome. This method not only minimizes unnecessary spend but also ensures that technology investments are directly contributing to organizational goals, such as improved compliance, enhanced collaboration, or accelerated innovation.
By moving from simple usage tracking to granular feature analysis and finally to outcome-driven optimization, organizations can unlock the full value of their SaaS portfolios while minimizing waste and maximizing strategic impact.

This specialized approach addresses unique Microsoft 365 challenges that traditional FinOps tools do not solve.

Microsoft 365 Specific Challenges

Licensing Complexity

Over 300+ features across multiple suite and add-on licensing tiers.
Feature overlap between different licensing packages
Tenant-wide vs. user-specific feature deployment
Technical limitations aligned to licensing tiers

Cost Optimization Barriers

Lack of visibility into feature utilization
Difficulty mapping business requirements to licensing tiers
Limited tools for comparative analysis across suites

Business Alignment Gap

Technical licensing decisions disconnected from business outcomes
Challenges in justifying licensing investments to stakeholders

Solving Microsoft 365 FinOps Challenges

Compare365 addresses the core challenge facing FinOps and ITAM teams: transforming complex licensing models into actionable business recommendations. The platform bridges the gap between technical specifications, complex licensing, and strategic value, with comprehensive feature mapping, and quantitative scoring systems.

Compare365.ai can can help to make informed licensing decisions based on actual business requirements rather than assumptions:

From Technical Specs to Business Value

To illustrate the platform's depth, consider how Compare365 can drill down to: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

This analysis helps organizations understand that while E3 provides basic Defender capabilities, the advanced Defender features requiring cloud analytics, automated investigation, and enterprise-grade threat hunting are only available in Microsoft 365 E5 or Security E5 - supporting informed decisions about comprehensive vs. specialized licensing approaches.

AI Summary: AI supported feature analysis explains the business impact and technical capabilities in plain language, helping decision-makers understand the strategic value without wading through technical documentation.

Improve Value with Coverage Analytics

A visual scoring system provides quantitative metrics for licensing decisions.

Real-time calculation as you select features and products
Visual progress indicators showing feature coverage across suites
Instant comparison across all Microsoft 365 licensing options

This enables data-driven decisions about licensing investments and helps identify when specialized suites might provide better outcome-specific value than comprehensive suites.

Feature Distribution Intelligence

Compare365.ai provides "a clear picture of how features are distributed across product groups and main products through its dedicated Feature Distribution View. This technical analysis helps you identify where your critical capabilities are concentrated to optimize your licensing strategy.

Advanced Distribution Analytics:

Visual bar charts displaying feature counts and percentages by category
Real-time adaptation to your feature selections and filtering choices

This technical perspective complements the strategic Business Outcome View, ensuring both IT administrators and business leaders can analyze licensing decisions through their preferred analytical framework.

Support for Cross-Functional Stakeholders

Compare365.ai uniquely addresses the reality that different stakeholders approach licensing decisions differently:

For Strategic Decision Makers (C-Level, Business Leaders): The Business Outcome View provides executive-level insights by:

Mapping suite capabilities to strategic objectives like "Boost Productivity" and "Ensure Compliance"
Showing percentage coverage scores with intuitive progress bars
Answering the critical question: "Which suite best supports our strategic goals?"
Enabling business-case development without requiring technical expertise

For Technical Teams (IT Administrators, FinOps Practitioners): The Feature Distribution View delivers technical intelligence through:

Statistical breakdowns of product and feature composition across product groups
Visual analytics showing where capabilities are concentrated
Insights into feature landscape and inform roadmap planning

Example: Dual Analysis of Security Investment

Business Outcome View: "Security suite provides 98% coverage of 'Improve Security' objectives"
Feature Distribution View: "Security features represent 35% of total capabilities, concentrated in Defender and Entra products"

This dual-perspective approach ensures comprehensive analysis while matching each stakeholder's decision-making framework.

Example Use Cases

Scenario 1: Microsoft 365 E5 Licensing Optimization

Example: Enterprise Microsoft 365 License Optimization

Consider a 5,000-user enterprise approaching its Microsoft EA renewal. The team discovers through Compare365.ai that all users are currently assigned Microsoft 365 E5 licenses (for illustration: £47–£55 per user per month), resulting in monthly costs of £235,000–£275,000.

Detailed feature analysis reveals significant optimization potential by distinguishing between tenant-wide features: such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and certain Microsoft Purview capabilities, which provide organization-wide protection once enabled. In addition, scopable features like Privileged Identity Management (PIM) and advanced Defender for Identity, which can be targeted to specific higher risk user profiles.

With this insight, the organization adopts a strategic approach: Microsoft 365 E3 for the majority of users, and E5 Security add-ons (about £12 per user per month) only for roles requiring access to advanced, scopable security features.

This licensing model maintains their protection and compliance requirements, while delivering potential savings of 20–30% (up to £70,000 monthly) through intelligent scoping and right-sizing, rather than a blanket E5 deployment.

Scenario 2: Strategic Planning for Copilot Adoption

Example: How Compare365.ai Supports Secure Copilot Planning

A financial services company uses Compare365.ai to plan its Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout with a focus on information protection and compliance:

Business Requirements Mapping: Compare365.ai helps the organization map Copilot’s AI features to specific business needs, but also flags critical requirements for information protection - such as ensuring sensitive data is properly classified and labeled with Microsoft Purview, and that only authorized users can access Copilot-grounded content
Prerequisite & Gap Analysis: The platform helps compare Microsoft 365 E3 versus Microsoft 365 E5 licensing and helps the virtual team identifies whether all necessary prerequisites are in place for Copilot, including sensitivity labels, encryption policies, and Entra ID conditional access controls
Access & Data Control Validation: Compare365.ai surfaces Entra ID (Azure AD) features including access policies and would help ensure Copilot will only surface data that users are permitted to see, in line with least-privilege and role-based access principles
Compliance & Audit Readiness: Identifying audit logging, retention, and eDiscovery features are identified, and policies are configured so all Copilot interactions and generated content can be monitored and retained for regulatory compliance
Licensing Stack Modeling: Finally, Compare365.ai models the licensing stack requirements, and associated business outcomes - confirming that Copilot can be deployed to the right users balancing innovation with strong data governance and compliance.

Scenario 3: Compliance Focused Optimization

Example: Compliance-Focused Optimization

A private healthcare organization uses Compare365.ai's Outcome-Led Exploration to address HIPAA compliance requirements:

Business Outcome Analysis: Selects "Ensure Compliance" outcome to filter Microsoft 365 features specifically supporting healthcare regulatory requirements
Feature Distribution View: Identifies that compliance features are concentrated in Microsoft Purview products, with tenant-wide vs. scopable deployment options clearly mapped
Coverage Score Comparison: Evaluates Microsoft 365 E5 (85% compliance coverage) vs. E3 + Compliance E5 (92% compliance coverage) using quantitative metrics
AI-Powered Insights: Transforms complex HIPAA technical requirements into clear business impact statements, showing which features address specific regulatory mandates like data encryption, audit trails, and access controls
Strategic Implementation Planning: Uses the platform's scopable feature analysis to prioritize deployment. For example, implementing tenant-wide data classification first, then targeting advanced eDiscovery and insider risk management to specific compliance roles

The analysis reveals that E3 + Compliance E5 provides superior compliance coverage at ~15% lower cost than universal E5 licensing, while ensuring all HIPAA requirements are met through precise feature targeting.

Transform Your Microsoft 365 Licensing Decisions from Guesswork to Strategic Advantage

Microsoft 365 licensing has grown more intricate than the initial per-user premise offered, largely reflecting Microsoft’s drive to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) through expansive licensing suites and add-on subscriptions.

This is where Compare365 quietly proves its worth. Instead of navigating dense feature matrices, or relying on vendor consultations that rarely offer clarity, the platform simply presents what’s included in each suite, that can be mapped to your actual business needs.

The platform's approach is refreshingly straightforward- you can explore by the technology you need, or the business outcomes you're trying to achieve, without the usual sales theatre.

When comparing your options, Compare365 quietly help calculate whether E3 plus Security E5 (£48 per user monthly) makes more sense than simply opting for full E5 (£57 per user monthly) and a broader features coverage.

It's not revolutionary, merely practical: clear data presented without fuss, helping you avoid the rather expensive surprise of discovering you've paid for sophisticated security but still lack some features your teams expected. Which, given the sums involved and the complexity Microsoft has managed to create, is rather more valuable than it might initially appear.

The Future of SaaS FinOps: Feature-Based Optimization by 2026

Compare365.ai is exploring and a new category of FinOps tools designed specifically for SaaS optimization. As organizations increasingly adopt multi-SaaS architectures, specialized optimization tools are becoming essential - particularly as AI-powered features reshape the landscape.

The Copilot Complexity Factor: With Copilot adoption projected to reach 18% penetration by FY26 and major feature releases every quarter, the complexity of Microsoft 365 optimization will continue accelerating. Organizations need specialized tools to navigate this rapidly evolving feature landscape, especially as Microsoft introduces new licensing structures and integration across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Expanding Market Opportunity: Microsoft's retirement of free Office 365 grants for nonprofits (July 1, 2025) creates additional market demand for optimization tools, as thousands of organizations must reassess their licensing strategies under new commercial terms.

Emerging SaaS FinOps Practices

Feature-Based Cost Management By 2026, we expect feature-based optimization to become as common as usage-based optimization is today. Organizations will:

Move beyond user-based metrics to feature-level utilization analysis
Implement feature governance alongside cloud governance
Develop ROI models for individual SaaS capabilities

Automated SaaS Optimization The next 18 months will see rapid advancement in:

Real-time monitoring of feature utilization vs. licensing
AI-driven recommendations for licensing adjustments
Integration with procurement systems for dynamic licensing management

Business Outcome Alignment Future SaaS FinOps will prioritize:

Connecting SaaS investments to measurable business outcomes
Automated business case generation for feature-level investments
Predictive modeling for licensing optimization opportunities across Microsoft's $29.9 billion productivity ecosystem

Getting Started with Compare365.ai

Compare365.ai is now available in open beta, offering your perfect technology stack solution to "build your perfect technology stack, compare suites, align with business goals, and optimize licensing in minutes – not months."

Immediate Access Features

No subscription required for core platform features
Comprehensive suite comparison across Microsoft 365 licensing options
Interactive exploration with dynamic filtering and visualization capabilities

Additionally, leveraging AI go accelerate normal workflows including:

AI-powered insights for complex features and technical documentation

Who Benefits from Compare365.ai

FinOps and ITAM Practitioners

ITAM and FinOps professionals managing SaaS spend
Teams implementing SaaS-specific FinOps practices
Organizations seeking to optimize their largest SaaS investment

IT Decision Makers

IT administrators evaluating licensing options
Technology leaders planning Microsoft 365 deployments
Teams responsible for license optimization and governance

Business Stakeholders

Procurement professionals negotiating Microsoft agreements
Finance teams seeking to optimize technology investments
Business leaders requiring data-driven licensing justification

Experience the Platform

Visit Compare365.ai to:

Explore with precision: Compare Microsoft 365 suites instantly
Prioritize what matters: Align with your business goals
Decide with confidence: Visualize coverage and optimize licensing

Conclusion: Transform Your Microsoft 365 Investment Strategy Today

Compare365.ai starts to address a critical gap in the FinOps toolkit by providing specialized capabilities for Microsoft 365 licensing optimization. As Microsoft's productivity ecosystem continues its rapid expansion, with $29.9 billion in quarterly revenue and Copilot projected to reach $6.1 billion in FY26 revenue. Expert developed tools like Compare365.ai become essential for maintaining cost efficiency while maximizing business value.

The platform's focus on feature-level analysis, business outcome alignment, and AI-powered insights provides FinOps teams with the capabilities needed to make informed decisions about one of their largest SaaS investments.

The Open Beta Opportunity: By launching in open beta, Compare365.ai offers the FinOps community immediate access to specialized SaaS optimization capabilities during a critical period of Microsoft 365 evolution. Early adopters can begin optimizing their Microsoft 365 investments today while providing feedback that shapes the platform's development positioning themselves ahead of the curve as feature complexity accelerates.

Ready to transform licensing costs into strategic business value?

Visit compare365.ai now to explore your Microsoft 365 licensing optimization opportunities—no registration required. Join the growing community of forward-thinking FinOps practitioners who are already discovering hidden optimization opportunities in their Microsoft 365 investments.

About Tony Mackelworth

Tony Mackelworth
Head of Solutions at Codestone

Compare365.ai is developed as a personal passion project by Tony Mackelworth, with extensive experience in leading global Microsoft licensing consulting functions, and design and launch of FinOps consulting services.

The platform represents his passion for the intersection of deep Microsoft 365 licensing, and modern FinOps methodologies.

Try Compare365.ai: Visit compare365.ai to explore Microsoft 365 licensing optimization capabilities.

Compare365.ai is not affiliated with Microsoft Corporation.

Compare365.ai Enters FinOps Space with Microsoft 365 Licensing Optimization Tool