How is AI changing business technology?

AI is changing business technology in two ways at once: it is being built into the tools your team already uses, such as Word, Outlook, Excel and Teams, and it is arriving informally, through free apps staff find for themselves. In Microsoft and LinkedIn's 2024 survey of 31,000 people in 31 countries, three in four knowledge workers (75%) used AI at work, and 78% of those users brought their own AI tools ^{1Source 1Microsoft and LinkedIn release the 2024 Work Trend Index on the state of AI at work — Microsoft, 8 May 2024.news.microsoft.com/source/2024/05/08/microsoft-and-linkedin-release-the-2024-work-trend-index-on-the-state-of-ai-at-work/Accessed 2 November 2026See in Sources}. The choice for leaders is whether AI arrives deliberately, with rules and a plan, or one unmanaged app at a time.

What does AI actually do for a business today?

Less than the hype, and more than enough to matter. The useful work is quiet:

• Drafting documents and emails from your own material.
• Summarising long email threads and the meeting you missed.
• Finding information across your files in seconds.
• Automating routine steps in everyday processes.

It's a few minutes saved, many times a day, across the whole team. Measured over a month, that's the return that shows up.

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Copilot is AI built into the Microsoft 365 apps your team works in. It can draft a proposal in Word from existing documents, summarise a Teams meeting or turn a spreadsheet into a summary, using your organisation's own data. Microsoft states that prompts, responses and the data Copilot reads are not used to train its foundation models, and that Copilot only shows a user content they already have at least view permission to ^{2Source 2Data, privacy and security for Microsoft 365 Copilot — Microsoft Learn.learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/microsoft-365/microsoft-365-copilot-privacyAccessed 2 November 2026See in Sources}.

Why does readiness come before rollout?

Because Copilot follows the permissions you already have—including the ones nobody meant to set. Every over-shared folder and forgotten "everyone" link becomes easy to find. An AI readiness check looks at your data, access, licensing and use cases in Microsoft 365 before anything is switched on, so AI only sees what it should.

Most businesses haven't done this yet. In the UK Government's 2025/2026 survey, 31% of businesses were using, adopting or considering AI, and only around a quarter of those (24%) had cyber security practices in place to manage its risks ^{3Source 3Cyber security breaches survey 2025/2026 — Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (official statistics), 2026.www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cyber-security-breaches-survey-20252026/cyber-security-breaches-survey-20252026Accessed 2 November 2026See in Sources}.

What does good AI governance look like?

• A short written policy: which AI tools are approved, and what must never be put into them.
• Security: approved business accounts, tidy permissions, and controls that stop data leaking into public AI tools.
• Accountability: AI drafts and speeds things up; people review and decide.
• Training, so the investment actually changes how people work.

How does AI fit with the rest of your technology?

AI isn't a standalone product. It runs on the same foundations as the rest of your cloud platform: identity, security and well-organised data in Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. That's why Software & Cloud and AI Automation sit side by side in the Business Technology Platform, managed under one strategy.