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💡 Appstrato:
Helping organisations drive maximum value from their Microsoft M365…
Helping organisations drive maximum value from their Microsoft M365…
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Articles by Steven
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Flexera Collaborate with Infraware
Flexera Collaborate with Infraware
Really impressed with Flexera's direction & excited to see SAMSentry as the leading SAM process review & management…
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Scenario & Question
Scenario & Question
An IT Manager has 850 users to manage and support. He is asked to perform a licence review by a well known publisher;…
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Microsoft Global SAM Service Award
Microsoft Global SAM Service Award
Another huge “well done” to everyone at Infraware. Microsoft Global SAM Service award finalist is no bad place to be…
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8K followers
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Steven Davison reposted thisSteven Davison reposted this⚽ England 🏴 vs Argentina 🇦🇷 tonight at 8pm… and my US client said tickets to the final secured if I get the right candidate this week. Sadly, I won’t be at the game tonight as I flew back to the UK last night from Miami ☀️✈️🇬🇧, but the search is now officially on for some top sales talent ASAP. 🚀 Over the next two weeks, my sole focus is filling 5 VP of Sales roles that I picked up whilst in the States, across 3 different firms. 📈 📍 Location is flexible I'm looking to speak with exceptional sales leaders across: ✅ East Coast ✅ West Coast ✅ Central US 💰 Packages ranging from $500k to $1m The US 🇺🇸 market is still relatively new for me, so I'm reaching out to my fantastic IT Channel network for a little help. 🤝 If you know a standout VP of Sales with a proven track record in the technology or channel space, I'd love an introduction. As many of you know, I love a challenge 😄 🎯 My goal is simple: fill all 5 positions with the very best talent available. 🗽 I'll be back in NYC in two weeks to finalise the shortlist, so any recommendations would be hugely appreciated. 👍 Please like, 💬 comment, 🔄 share or repost if someone in your network could be a fit. Thank you in advance everyone 🙌 And come on England! 🏆⚽🔥 #SalesLeadership #VPofSales #ITChannel #TechSales #Leadership #Recruitment #Hiring #USA #Networking #NewYork 🇬🇧🇺🇸🚀
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Steven Davison posted thisEveryone's racing to build AI agents. Almost no one's managing them... For 25 years I've watched the same pattern in IT. A new technology arrives, adoption explodes, and governance turns up years too late — after the audit, the breach, or the bill. Software did it. SaaS did it. Cloud and now it's agents. Here's what changed this year. Microsoft made every agent an identity. Agent 365 shipped in May. Every new Copilot Studio agent gets an Entra Agent ID. That's a genuine step forward. But identity isn't asset management. Knowing who an agent is doesn't tell you: – who owns it – what it's licensed to do – what it costs you every month – what data it can reach – whether it should still exist And every agent your organisation built before 18 March? Still sitting on a legacy service principal. No automated migration. Invisible to the shiny new governance layer. You already have shadow agents. You just haven't counted them yet. An unmanaged laptop is a risk. An unmanaged agent is a risk that acts on its own, at machine speed, with your credentials. Different blast radius entirely. That's where we've pointed 365SAMPulse. We treat agents like every other asset in the estate — discover them, assign an owner, track the consumption, forecast the cost, flag the anomalies, and retire them when they're done. Software and agent management. Same discipline. New asset class. So a real question for the FinOPs, ITAM, and IT leaders here: Who's actually started managing AI agents as assets in their M365 estate — and who's still telling themselves it's next year's problem?
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Steven Davison shared thisFinOps & ITAM PROFESSIONALS: Every AI agent will be an asset. If it's not in your inventory, it's shadow spend heading into the mist. The road into AI is genuinely thrilling. New capability, new productivity, new ground to cover. But it's the mist in this picture that most organisations underestimate. Before your business builds a single agent, you need to understand every element of your existing M365 estate - what you own, what's actually used, what's wasted, and what it truly costs. That's the clear stretch of road you can already see. Then the agents arrive, and the discipline changes. Every AI agent that is built has to be treated as an IT asset in its own right: what it does, how it works, what it's for, and exactly what it costs to run. An agent you can't see, measure or account for is fog on the windscreen. Get this right and those roads open onto extraordinary vistas for your business. Get it wrong and the mist doesn't just slow your organisation down - it stops it. Progress stalls, productivity leaks, and the spend keeps climbing whether anyone's watching or not. The challenge for FinOps & ITAM professionals has never been greater, who's ready for this one .... Picture: Snowdonia, Wales, 6am... 🫨
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Steven Davison shared thisReally proud of what the team at Appstrato have achieved over the past 12 months. Small team, big progress. If you are a CIO and want easy to use AI cost reports on your M365 portfolio send me a DM. If you are a Microsoft CSP or MSP and want to provide detailed and insightful cost optimisation reports for your clients without incurring huge costs send me a DM. #M365AI #M365Cowork #AIusagecostsSteven Davison shared thisMicrosoft just gave you three different ways to pay for AI. Good luck explaining that to your CFO! Microsoft 365 Copilot: a flat per-user licence, predictable, until you're paying for users who barely open it. Azure OpenAI: consumption-based, pay for what you use, until a burst of activity becomes an unexpected line item on the invoice. And now Copilot Cowork introduces another form of metered AI consumption alongside the other two. Three billing approaches, three different ways for AI costs to grow. All inside the same Microsoft ecosystem. Here's the real issue, most organisations still aren't managing AI spend with the same discipline they apply to software licensing. AI adoption is accelerating faster than most organisations can govern the costs behind it. By the time finance starts asking questions, the costs have often already landed. That's the gap 365SAMPulse AI Cost Intelligence is designed to close. One view across Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI usage. See consumption and spend across both, with Azure OpenAI anomaly detection and forecasting to identify cost spikes before they become budget surprises. The Microsoft AI ecosystem is only going to become more sophisticated and more complex to manage. The organisations that stay in control won't be the ones buying the most AI, they'll be the ones with the clearest view of what it's costing them. See your Microsoft AI spend in one place: sampulse365.com
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Steven Davison shared thisVolume on: Sharing for those of you who are too hot this week…🥵 No educational content or talking about M365 cost reporting today. On a road trip yesterday… came across this spot. Had to record and share, the sound alone will cool you down …🤣 Location: Betws-y-coed, Wales 🏴 #dayofffromseriousposts
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Steven Davison shared thisCan AI & Software Asset Management Come together... The old SAM question was: Are we paying for licences people don't use? Still a valid question. But it's no longer the only one that matters. Here's the question that's replacing it: What business value are we actually getting from the tools people do use? Janet has a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. So does Peter and John. They all show as "active" on the dashboard. But are they equally productive? Who's burning tokens on high-value output? Who barely touches it? What's the return per pound of AI spend? This is where traditional SAM thinking meets FinOps, and where a new discipline is emerging that we call Tokenomics: not just "did we overspend?" but "did we get the return?" The infrastructure to answer this already exists inside most Microsoft 365 environments. Usage signals are there. AI consumption data is there. What's been missing is a lens that connects spend to value, not just headcount to licence. That's the pivot we're making with 365SAMPulse, and I think it's a pivot the whole industry needs to make. Cost optimisation matters. It always will. But the organisations that get ahead in the next 18 months won't just be the ones who cut waste, they'll be the ones who can answer a harder question: Not what did we spend. What did we get. Is our business getting a maximum return from the AI & software we use.... Who else is thinking about this shift in the SAM world? #AIValue #AISAM #Tokenomics #CopilotCharges #SAMPulse365
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Steven Davison shared thisThis week in San Diego, the FinOps Foundation gave a name to the thing that's about to redefine your job: Tokenomics. If you work in SAM and haven't heard about it yet — you will. At FinOps X, the FinOps and Linux Foundations announced the Tokenomics Foundation: an industry body to build open standards for managing AI costs. Tokens — the atomic unit of AI — are now a spend category demanding their own discipline. Backers include Microsoft, Flexera and ServiceNow. The number that stopped the room: ~6 quadrillion tokens consumed today, projected to hit 120 quadrillion within three years. 20x growth. Now connect that to our SAM world. Microsoft is weaving AI deep into M365. The cost driver is no longer just the licence — it's consumption. AI token charges flowing into MAC commitments. Spend that moves daily, sitting behind the seat, invisible to tooling built for annual true-ups. So the SAM job description just changed: ❌ Manage seat allocations and licence types ✅ Manage AI token spend against MAC commitments ❌ Annual true-up reviews ✅ Daily consumption governance ❌ Equal coverage across every publisher ✅ Hyper-focus on widely-deployed platforms with AI charges at the back end — M365 first Three personal predictions: 1️⃣ SAM teams will restructure around the publishers that actually move the P&L. When 20x token growth meets consumption billing, spreading your team across 40 publishers is a resourcing model from a different era. 2️⃣ This goes downmarket fast. Consumption volatility hits SMBs just as hard as enterprise — and they'll demand governed AI spend for the first time. That's a whole new market for SAM professionals. 3️⃣ Tooling follows the discipline. The incumbents have backed the Tokenomics Foundation — but acknowledging the shift and being architected for it are two different things. Expect purpose-built, publisher-focused platforms that manage licence charges, surface recommendations AND report on AI consumption. Platforms like SAMPulse365 are already emerging in the M365 space, and I'd expect respected SAM service organisations to build their own within 18 months. FinOps just named the discipline. SAM professionals must adapt — because the convergence of these two practices is where the next decade of our industry gets decided (and exciting). Tokens are now a CEO-level concern. Is your SAM team in that conversation? 👇 #Tokenomics #SAM #ITAM #FinOps #Microsoft365 #SoftwareAssetManagement #SAMPulse365
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Steven Davison shared thisHow Microsoft just created a new SAM sector for small to medium businesses globally....
Steven Davison commented on a post
5h
Pete Sena this is funny (but not at the same time... ). It's literally been our focus for the last few months. I think we will start to see some of the IT Asset Management/FinOps processes come into play for AI /Agent cost management. Nice post, and brought a smile to the end of my week.
Steven Davison commented on a post
11h
Siddharth Tiwari with you 100%, it's been our focus for the last 12 months. Agent Asset Management is quickly becoming a real issue for many organisations that are investing in AI.
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Steven Davison liked thisToday marks my 2 year anniversary as IT Manager at Moore Scarrott Group. What an exciting, challenging & enjoyable 2 years it has been! There have been many notable points from the last 2 years - to name a few... - Relocated the Frome office to Bath - Opened a brand new office in Exeter - Set up network infrastructure across 2 new warehouse units - Built a dedicated internal IT support function for day-to-day operations - Enrolled all end user laptops into Intune - Migrated to an AVD-based hosted platform - Implemented various IT policies (hardware replacements, AI usage etc) - Assisted with the launch of a new law firm within Moore Scarrott Group, Rockeagle Law ...alongside many other smaller scale tasks and projects keeping us busy. I am learning a huge amount in my role as IT Manager, from troubleshooting day to day issues within the accountancy sector and navigating fresh challenges that come with working in IT in 2026 (including how to resist the breakfast van every morning!), to looking at the "bigger picture" projects and ensuring the technology we utilise continues to evolve and align with company goals. Thank you to all of my colleagues who have made the past 2 years memorable - here's to many more! 🥳
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Steven Davison reacted on thisGreat oaks from little acorns grow. Building on what we have achieved so far, Right Prompt has now put down roots in the UK. Thank you the the Right Prompt Technologies team and the customers, partners and ServiceNow team supporting usSteven Davison reacted on thisRight Prompt is now established in the UK. Operating as Right Prompt Technologies (UK) Limited, we are bringing our ServiceNow consulting, implementation and managed services capabilities closer to customers and partners across the UK and Europe. We work with organisations looking to get more value from ServiceNow and applied AI, with an initial focus on financial services and areas such as customer onboarding, underwriting, service operations and platform adoption. Rob Jenkins is leading the business as GM UK & Europe, supported by Laura Coles as a UK Director. We would be pleased to speak with customers and partners about how we could support their ServiceNow ambitions. Rob Jenkins Laura Coles Saurav Panda #ServiceNow #FinancialServices #AppliedAI #UKLaunch
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Steven Davison reacted on thisSteven Davison reacted on thisMicrosoft 365 Copilot is, from the perspective of a Microsoft 365 Consultant, one of the hardest technologies to start your career with as a Junior Specialist. That's a conclusion I've reached after several months of discussions with people working in the same field but with different levels of experience. There are several reasons for this, but the most important one is that Microsoft 365 Copilot is an add-on to everything else. Before you can truly understand Copilot, you first need to understand how SharePoint works, how OneDrive works, how Microsoft Teams works, how Microsoft Loop works, and when and why to use each of them... list goes on and on... On top of that, the pace of change in Microsoft 365 Copilot is incredibly fast, which only adds to the level of difficulty 😅 Marcin Nawrot thanks for this conversation yestarday - it was a main inspiration for this post 😁
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Steven Davison liked thisSteven Davison liked thisYour next employee may be an AI agent. But how will you licence its work? We know how to license people. We are still learning how to license digital labour. Enterprise software pricing is shifting from traditional per-user models to per-agent, per-action and consumption-based pricing. The old question was: - How many users need access? The new question is: - How many tasks will AI agents perform—and what will each business outcome cost? This creates a new challenge for CIOs, CFOs and procurement teams. One AI agent may trigger multiple actions, call other systems, repeat workflows and consume different models before completing a single task. Without the right controls, thousands of small automated transactions can quietly become the next major source of software overspend. Organizations now need to focus on four areas: • Cost per business outcome—not just credits consumed • Clear ownership and budgets for every AI agent • Contract protections around overages, caps and price increases • Continuous review of duplicate or inefficient automations At Silver Leaf Solutions, we are increasingly helping clients think beyond AI adoption and build the commercial governance required to make agentic consumption sustainable. AI governance is no longer only about security, data and ethics. It is also becoming a software licensing and spend-governance discipline. How is your organization preparing to measure the cost of its digital labour?
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Steven Davison liked thisSteven Davison liked thisMicrosoft's AI strategy is clear now: cherry pick what's best out there, and plug it on the existing Enterprise infrastructure (and charge big dollars). A few examples, from the last four months. Copilot Cowork runs on Claude. Same reasoning engine, same agentic harness, built off Anthropic's own blueprint eight weeks after Claude Cowork went live. Open the model picker and choose: Sonnet 5, Claude Opus 4.8, GPT 5.5. (Microsoft's own model, Cowork 1, is "coming soon.") Scout, the "always-on" agent Microsoft unveiled at Build in June, runs on OpenClaw. Open-source framework, released in November which quickly gained huge popularity. Microsoft forked it, wrapped it in Entra identity, shipped it as an "Autopilot." Even the new multi-model research feature has Claude checking GPT's homework, inspired by Perplexity's Model Council. Here's the plug-in part: → 400M+ people already inside Outlook, Teams, Excel. → Access and security management are wrapped around every agent Microsoft ships. → Work IQ pulling context straight from a company's mail and files. And here's the big-dollars part: → Copilot Premium is priced at 30USD/month, more expensive than many options out there → Cowork is priced per usage, on top of Copilot Premium, with a heavy task costing more than 7 USD Microsoft stopped trying to build the best model years ago. The model is the ingredient now. Microsoft sells the kitchen, the staff, and the lease. This is smart for Microsoft, and practical for small and medium size business: they can get access to the "best" AI tools as part of the environment (although at a premium price).
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