What happened instead is a lack of clarity in Microsoft’s rebranding. Over the past week, reports have spread across Reddit, Hacker News and X saying that Microsoft Office has been renamed “Microsoft 365 Copilot”. It sounds believable, but it is also wrong.

Gareth Oystryk, senior director of Marketing, Microsoft 365, clarified: “We have not made any recent naming changes to our Office apps. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the Office apps within the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, remain unchanged.

In November 2022, we renamed only the Office “hub” app for web and mobile to the Microsoft 365 app. In January 2025, we updated it to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app to reflect its role in bringing Copilot and Microsoft 365 productivity experiences together in one place.”

The source of the confusion was that Office.com redirected users towards what Microsoft calls the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. 

This is not a new office suite, it’s a hub. One place to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, alongside Copilot features, under a single banner.

Microsoft set this path years ago. In 2022, the company dropped the Office name at the brand level and replaced it with Microsoft 365. The familiar apps never disappeared. What changed was the wrapper around them. 

Then, as Copilot became central to Microsoft’s pitch, the old Office app was renamed again, this time as the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.

That is where the language tripped people up. On Microsoft’s own site, users are greeted with the line: “The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office)…”. Read quickly, it looks final, almost like an end notice for Office itself. That single phrase was enough to birth the idea that Office had been fully replaced.

It has not. Word is still Word. Excel still opens spreadsheets. PowerPoint still builds slides. Businesses and individuals can even buy Office 2024 as a standalone package, without cloud tools and without Copilot. That option alone should settle the case.

The timing made things worse. Microsoft has recently pushed the Copilot name harder than ever, positioning it as the front door to productivity. Office.com now reiterates that message. The result is a blurred line between the apps people use every day and the hub Microsoft wants them to launch from.

What surprises me is not that users are confused, but that Microsoft seems surprised by the reaction. So far, the company has not publicly stepped in to clear the air. Silence, in this case, has allowed assumptions to do the talking.

There are risks here. Some users now believe Office no longer exists. Others assume Copilot is mandatory or that familiar tools are being phased out. For businesses, especially cautious ones, that kind of uncertainty slows decisions and feeds distrust.

This episode is about unclear messaging layered on top of years of background rebrands. Microsoft may see Microsoft 365 Copilot as a neat, unified story. Many users see something else entirely, a once-simple product family wrapped in names that no longer explain themselves.

Office, whatever Microsoft chooses to call it at the top level, is still very much alive. The problem is that Microsoft’s own words have made that harder to see.

Introduced at the Microsoft Ignite Conference in San Francisco, organizations of all sizes gain real-time access to Sophos threat intelligence within Microsoft’s AI-powered environments, helping them strengthen defenses and respond to threats more effectively.

Every day, Sophos processes more than 223 terabytes of telemetry in its Sophos Central platform, generating over 34 million detections and automatically blocking more than 11 million threats.

This global scale of customer insight continuously informs Sophos product and services and fuels the intelligence within Sophos Intelix, now accessible for free to users of Microsoft Security Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

This milestone underscores Sophos’ mission to empower every organization with resilient, intelligent cybersecurity and to democratize cybersecurity for organizations of all sizes, meeting them wherever they are in their cybersecurity journey, within the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem.

Sophos Intelix for Microsoft Security Copilot

Sophos Intelix provides advanced threat context and enrichment capabilities directly into Microsoft Security Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI assistant for Security Operation Center (SOC) and IT teams.

Security Copilot connects data across Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Intune, Entra, and Purview, allowing analysts and expert users to query and investigate threats using natural language enriched with Sophos’ insights from protecting more than 600,000 organizations.

These teams are often protecting organizations 24/7/365 and require the latest intelligence at their fingertips at all times to protect their organization.

 Through this integration, security analysts and IT teams can:

• Enrich alerts and triage incidents faster using Sophos Intelix intelligence and services including sandbox detonation and dynamic analysis.
• Investigate indicators of compromise (IOCs) with file, URL, and IP reputation lookups.
• Access global insights and prevalence data from Sophos X-Ops directly within Security Copilot.

Sophos Intelix will also be available in Microsoft’s new Security Store for third-party agents, MCP services, and APIs.

Sophos Intelix for Microsoft 365 Copilot 

Sophos Intelix also integrates with Microsoft 365 Copilot, making comprehensive threat intelligence available and accessible for the masses within everyday Microsoft productivity tools such as Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.

With Sophos Intelligence in Microsoft 365, IT administrators, risk managers, and business users can:

• Query Sophos threat intelligence in natural language directly within Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Microsoft Teams.
• Check whether links, files, or domains are associated with known malicious activity.
• Strengthen cyber awareness and decision-making abilities within productivity tools they’re using daily.

By embedding these capabilities into Microsoft 365 Copilot, Sophos helps organizations of all sizes make faster, better-informed security decisions without leaving their workflow.

This integration doubles down on Sophos’ vision to democratize access to advanced cybersecurity insights, giving Microsoft 365 Copilot users the same level of intelligence leveraged by sophisticated SOC teams.

Microsoft Agent 365 Capabilities for Sophos Intelix

Sophos Intelix will also integrate with Microsoft’s growing Copilot and agent ecosystem, extending Sophos intelligence across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Powered by Entra-based identity management, this integration enables organizations to bring Sophos Intelix into their agent portfolio with full observability and compliance.

Microsoft Agent 365 serves as the control plane for AI agents, allowing organizations to extend their existing infrastructure, applications, and protections to agents, while using familiar capabilities that have been adapted to agent needs.

Together, these integrations further strengthen Sophos’ commitment to delivering advanced intelligence wherever organizations operate within the Microsoft agent ecosystem.

Meeting the Growing Demands of Defenders 

AI is transforming industries worldwide, and cybersecurity is no exception. Security teams are flooded with alerts yet often lack the resources to keep pace, with small and mid-sized businesses most affected.

In the Sophos Addressing the Cybersecurity Skills Shortage in SMBs report, 96 percent of respondents reported difficulties investigating suspicious alerts and 75 percent struggled to remediate incidents quickly.

At the same time, attackers are accelerating: the Sophos Active Adversary Report 2025 found that data exfiltration begins in just three days on average, with a median of only 2.7 hours between exfiltration and detection, and attackers can reach Active Directory in as little as 11 hours. These findings underscore the urgent need for defenders to adopt faster, more effective ways of analyzing and investigating alerts.

Powered by Deep Intelligence

By exposing Sophos Intelix within the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem, Sophos makes threat intelligence universally accessible, helping organizations accelerate analysis, reduce response time, and improve security outcomes.

“The Microsoft Copilot ecosystem is transforming how people interact with technology by bringing natural language interfaces into the core of its Copilot ecosystem,” said Simon Reed, Chief Scientific Research Officer, Sophos. “The future of SOC productivity is moving beyond the graphical user interfaces we’ve relied on since the 1980s, toward a new paradigm of human–AI collaboration. AI assistants powered by expansive datasets, deep threat intelligence, and advanced systems are fundamentally reshaping how analysts work. By making Sophos threat intelligence available through both Microsoft Security Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot, we’re giving defenders faster, more natural access to insights that help them respond to threats with speed, precision, and confidence.”

“AI is the force multiplier for defenders, and when partners like Sophos bring their agentic innovation into the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem, the impact is exponential. Together, we’re not just building tools—we’re creating a new era of intelligent, collaborative cyber defense,” said Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security.

To learn more about Sophos Intelix integrations for Microsoft Security Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Studio for creators, and Microsoft Agent 365, check here.

Before now, businesses paid $30 per user monthly for Microsoft 365 Copilot, with an additional $20 for access to sales, service, or finance tools. The new arrangement drops the total cost to a flat $30 per user, removing what many saw as pricing limitations to adoption. The tools will be available through the Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Store.

The change is aimed at simplifying subscriptions and enhancing adoption among enterprises. Microsoft says more than 100 million people already use Copilot, including over 70% of Fortune 500 firms. Analysts estimate Office Copilot alone is generating over $1 billion annually.

Alongside this change, Microsoft has confirmed it will use Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 models within Microsoft 365 Copilot. Tests showed Claude outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-5 in Excel automation, large-scale text processing, and PowerPoint generation. Despite Microsoft’s deep ties to OpenAI, it will pay Anthropic via Amazon Web Services to secure access.

The company is also preparing to launch Agent 365 at its Ignite event. The suite will help businesses oversee AI agents while maintaining security, compliance, and governance standards.

For enterprise users, the integrations mean smoother workflows: sales teams can prepare for meetings with instant CRM insights, service teams can draft customer-ready responses in less time, and finance teams can reconcile data and produce reports with fewer manual steps.

Shaun Worsley, manager, Sales Process & Technology at Sandvik Coromant, said: “The role-based sales solution can transform the way our teams work. Now that it’s part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, we can scale AI across the business much faster to accelerate adoption.”

In bringing everything under one subscription and enlarging its model choices, Microsoft is strengthening its hold in enterprise AI. With Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, and others already integrated into Azure AI Foundry, the company is building a diverse and resilient ecosystem.

These tools, which integrate deep reasoning, will roll out in April under the company’s newly launched Frontier program.

Researcher is built to simplify complex, multi-step research tasks by pulling from both internal company data and external sources. Microsoft has built it as a tool that can develop business strategies, conduct competitive market analysis, and generate detailed reports with outstanding depth.

Unlike traditional AI search tools, Researcher is designed to operate seamlessly with external data connectors, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Confluence. This means businesses can extract and analyse insights from multiple platforms without switching between applications. 

Microsoft claims Researcher offers a level of analysis that surpasses previous AI tools, making it a valuable asset for professionals handling large-scale research and strategy development.

For organisations dealing with extensive datasets, Analyst offers a solid solution. Built on OpenAI’s o3-mini reasoning model, it mimics the analytical approach of a data scientist, working iteratively to refine its outputs.

Microsoft highlights its ability to convert raw data into actionable insights, including revenue forecasts, customer behaviour trends, and demand predictions.

An interesting feature of Analyst is its ability to run Python scripts, allowing businesses to execute complex data queries while maintaining full visibility into the AI’s processes. Microsoft asserts that this transparency ensures accuracy and reliability, reducing concerns over AI-generated errors.

Alongside Researcher and Analyst, Microsoft has expanded its Copilot Studio platform to support the creation of autonomous AI agents. These agents can now independently perform tasks, initiate workflows, and handle business operations with minimal human intervention.

The new features in Copilot Studio allow IT teams to build and govern AI-driven workflows while maintaining control over data security and access permissions. Microsoft claims this system ensures enterprises can confidently integrate AI without compromising regulatory or security requirements.

Microsoft 365 Copilot customers will gain access to Researcher and Analyst through the Frontier program, an initiative that allows early adopters to test upcoming AI innovations before they reach general availability.

The company acknowledges that AI models, including those behind Researcher and Analyst, are not flawless. There are ongoing challenges in preventing AI from generating inaccurate information or misinterpreting data. However, Microsoft says its approach—grounding AI outputs in enterprise data and allowing user oversight—helps mitigate these risks.

With these developments, Microsoft is embedding AI deeper into enterprise workflows, aiming to bolster how businesses leverage artificial intelligence for research, analysis, and automation.