The Conference Debrief: Microsoft AI Tour

29th April 2026 4 minute read

April has been a busy month of industry events, this months edition of the Conference Debrief features insights from our Microsoft Business Manager, Zach Dickson who recently attended the Microsoft AI Tour in Auckland. Zach discusses the evolution from AI experimentation to AI transformation, the agentic era, and how Copilot’s Cowork, Critique and Council functions are shaping the future of customer workflows.

With Satya Nadella in town, the Dicker Data Microsoft team joined a strong showing from the NZ partner community for what was a standout event and a big moment for our local ecosystem.

There were a few key takeaways that the team and I came away with that I wanted to share.

We are moving from AI Experimentation to AI Transformation

AI is no longer optional, and Microsoft is done treating it like a future roadmap item. AI is now embedded in everyday work, with partners expected to lead with AI as a core value add from the Microsoft Tech Stack. Over the past couple of years, Microsoft has clearly defined the role Copilot for M365 and Copilot for Business within the rapidly evolving AI landscape. It is the UI for AI, leveraging LLMs from both Open AI and Anthropic, with GPT & Claude respectively. This allows users to choose the model that best fits the type of “cognitive scaffolding” required for that particular piece of work.

"The AI Tour drove home a reality: AI is no longer an innovation layer, it's becoming foundational infrastructure for Kiwi businesses. There’s no slowing down now. Copilot is the starting point, agents are coming next, and true differentiation will come down to security, governance, sovereignty, and skills" says Zach.

The Agentic Era is very much upon us

As expected, there was a big focus on the opportunity that Copilot Agents brings, and the value-add to NZ businesses. The recently announced Agent 365 and M365 E7 signal Microsoft’s shift from AI as a feature to AI as a workforce. Agent 365 brings Copilot agents directly into everyday tools like Outlook, Teams, Dynamics and SharePoint, letting organisations automate real work - customer follow-ups, quoting, reporting, support triage - using their own data and processes. These aren’t chatbots; they’re task doers.

M365 E7 effectively bundles Copilot with advanced security, compliance and identity controls, making AI safe to deploy at scale. For customers already investing in E5‑level capability, E7 reframes the conversation away from “AI access” to “AI-driven productivity and cost take‑out.”

Zach explains, “For Kiwi partners, this is a huge opportunity. The value isn’t in reselling licences - it’s in designing agents tied to local business workflows, integrating data sources, and governing them properly. Partners who understand industry context (construction, agriculture, retail, public sector) and can package repeatable Copilot agent use cases will win. Done right, Copilot agents drive stickier customers, higher-margin services, and long-term relevance in an AI-led Microsoft stack.”

Cowork, Critique, Council – how can these new Copilot functions add value to your customers?

Cowork

Many partners might be familiar with the term Cowork as part of the Anthropic’s Claude AI. It offers the ability to execute complex, multi-step tasks for knowledge work – planning, executing and delivering finished outputs for the task at hand.

The real difference between Cowork in Copilot and using Claude on its own isn’t the AI model, it’s where the AI lives.

Cowork brings Claude‑level AI into the Microsoft tenant, operating inside the customer’s existing security, identity and data controls. That turns AI from a clever tool into something the organisation can safely roll out and use day to day.

Because Cowork runs in‑tenant, it respects existing permissions, keeps data inside M365 boundaries, and fits naturally into how customers already manage IT, security and compliance. There’s no need to copy data into external tools or create new governance rules just to enable AI.

Ahna Budden, our Microsoft Marketing Manager had this to say: “Copilot Cowork is going to make marketing so much more efficient, with significantly less manual input and creation required. It can do it all from one document and organise your next steps. There is no way this will replace a team but will instead enhance their capability - I am very excited about this!!”

Critique

Critique is a multi‑model deep research system designed to help partners tackle genuinely complex customer problems. It separates content creation from critical review, using leading models from Anthropic and OpenAI to improve quality and reliability. One model drives the research and drafting - structuring the problem, pulling relevant insights, and producing an initial view - while a second model acts as an expert reviewer, interrogating the assumptions and strengthening the final output.

This presents a real opportunity for everyday use. For Kiwi customers, the result is clearer thinking, stronger recommendations, and more confidence in high‑stakes decisions, whether that’s strategy, risk, compliance, or transformation. For partners, Critique creates an opportunity to deliver higher‑value advisory work at scale, backed by rigorous research and transparent reasoning, rather than just faster report writing.

Council

Council takes a different approach, designed to give partners a clear side‑by‑side view across multiple leading models. It runs Anthropic and OpenAI models in parallel, with each producing a complete, standalone report, including facts, citations, and its own analytical framing. This surfaces insights one model might emphasise or interpret differently from the other.

A dedicated judge model then assesses both outputs, producing a distilled view of the key findings and clearly calling out where the models align or diverge, whether that’s differences in emphasis, scale, or interpretation - along with unique insights from each.

For Kiwi customers, this means more balanced, transparent advice and fewer blind spots on complex or high‑impact decisions. For partners, Council supports stronger, defensible recommendations particularly where customers expect clear trade‑offs, independent thinking, and confidence that decisions have been properly stress‑tested.

To conclude, Zach says "All in all, it was a fantastic day, with great content and even better connections. It is always fantastic seeing the entire Microsoft community under one roof, and I personally am looking forward to seeing everyone back at the New Zealand International Convention Centre for our Dicker Data TechX event on the 25th of August!"

Want to explore what these changes mean for your Microsoft practice? Get in touch with the team today.

If you're keen to dive deeper, Reseller News has also published a comprehensive wrap-up of the Microsoft AI Tour, offering additional perspectives from across the event. Read the article here.

Zach Dickson

Microsoft Sales Manager - Dicker Data NZ

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