Claude & Cowork in a Microsoft 365 World

Overview:

This session is for Microsoft 365 professionals who already use Microsoft Copilot and want to understand where Claude and Claude Cowork fit alongside it. We start with the partnership story - how Claude models now run inside parts of Microsoft Copilot, what that actually means in practice, and why the "pick one" framing is increasingly outdated. We then walk through the genuine differences: where Microsoft 365 Copilot wins (deep tenant integration, governance, identity, and the apps people already use every day), and where Claude wins (long-context document work, writing quality, and the agentic depth of Claude Cowork on a personal desktop). We look at the architectural symmetry - how Cowork on the Microsoft side and Cowork on the Anthropic side both work through Skills that are eerily similar in shape - and what that means for makers building reusable workflows. We cover the practical realities of using both in the same week without losing your mind: which tasks belong on which side, how to keep your Skills consistent across both, and how to set up the desk of someone who genuinely uses both. We close on the governance and procurement conversations to have with IT and security before scaling. You leave with a clear, opinionated view of how Claude and Microsoft 365 Copilot fit together in a real organisation — and the practical setup to use them both.

Why you should Attend:

Most organisations are in the middle of a quiet, unspoken decision: are we a Microsoft Copilot shop, a Claude shop, a ChatGPT shop, or some combination of the three? The decision is rarely made openly. It is being made one purchase order, one pilot, and one frustrated user at a time. The framing of "pick one" is also wrong, and increasingly so. Claude models now power parts of Microsoft Copilot itself. Microsoft and Anthropic are partners, not enemies. Claude Cowork and Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork share the same architectural pattern of agentic work and reusable Skills, designed by partly overlapping teams. The interesting question is not which one wins. The interesting question is how to use both, where each one is the right tool, and how to think about a future where the two co-exist inside the same workflow. This session is for the people responsible for getting that answer right.

Areas Covered in the Session:

• The Microsoft and Anthropic partnership: what is real, what is hype
• How Claude models now power parts of Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Where Microsoft 365 Copilot genuinely wins, and why
• Where Claude and Claude Cowork genuinely win, and why
• Architectural symmetry: Skills on the Microsoft side and the Anthropic side
• Choosing the right tool for the task without becoming dogmatic
• Using both in the same week without losing your mind
• Keeping Skills consistent across both ecosystems
• Governance, identity, and the conversations to have with IT
• What a real "both" desk looks like, and how to set one up

Who Will Benefit:

• Microsoft 365 Professionals - responsible for AI tooling decisions
• Microsoft Copilot Champions - looking honestly outside the bubble
• IT Pros & Solution Architects - designing AI strategy for the business
• Procurement & Strategy Leads - making vendor decisions in a partnership world
• Consultants & Advisors - guiding clients across the AI landscape