Microsoft recognized as a Leader in Forrester Wave for Content Platforms

Also, new pay-as-you-go services will soon be generally available

Microsoft 365 drives the future of work. On an average workday, our customers add over 2 billion new documents to Microsoft 365, powered by SharePoint, growing by more than 200 petabytes every month. Customers recognize that our content platform is central to the Microsoft 365 architecture -- comprising Microsoft Syntex, OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva, Office, Loop, and now, Microsoft 365 Copilot. Together these solutions transform productivity and business processes by bringing AI and content management into the flow of work.

Microsoft is a 2023 Forrester Wave leader in Content Platforms

We’re excited to share that Forrester, a leading global research and advisory firm, published its report, The Forrester Wave™: Content Platforms, Q1 2023 and recognized Microsoft as a Leader. This recognition reaffirms for us our dedication to providing our customers with powerful tools to help you work, learn, organize, connect, and create.

Figure 1 The Forrester Wave

In the report, Microsoft had the highest score in the strategy category and highest possible score in the market presence category. Forrester states in the report that:

Microsoft executes on an aggressive roadmap and influences the market direction. Microsoft enhances its core repository, SharePoint Online, with integrated components from the Microsoft 365 stack, including process automation, collaboration, governance, and intelligent services for documents. Microsoft’s strategy weaves content into its overall productivity cloud, powering the modern digital workplace. With the launch of Microsoft Syntex, its superior product vision focuses on extracting insights and knowledge from content. These new capabilities, however, introduce complexity to its pricing and licensing model, with a growing list of add-ons and consumption-based services augmenting its per-user-priced tiers. Microsoft’s high-level roadmap is public. Customers can expect more pretrained document processing AI/ML models, enhanced archiving, e-signature, and a “headless” repository-as-a-service content platform.

We're honored to be recognized for our offerings. This is a busy year for us as we continue building on our SharePoint foundation and bring next-generation AI innovations into the flow of work:

• Microsoft Viva optimizes employee experiences, delivering knowledge and optimizing performance across the organization.
• Microsoft Syntex, a set of services that brings Content AI to Microsoft 365, unlocks the value of your content when it’s used in content-centric processes such as employee onboarding, invoice processing, and contract management.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot brings next-gen AI in a chat interface across the apps you use every day to transform interaction and creation.
• Microsoft Loop delivers an easily shared, component-based approach to common elements such as paragraphs, tables, or lists.
• Microsoft Purview brings our top-notch security, compliance, and privacy solutions to Microsoft 365.

We believe this recognition reinforces our commitment to innovating through AI to maximize the value of your content. Get the details into why we’re a Content Platforms leader by downloading the Forrester report.

New pay-as-you-go services coming soon: OCR, translation, content assembly, and more

Along with the acknowledgement of our content innovations, we’re excited to make more of Syntex available to more customers, by adding new services to many Microsoft 365 plans.
In February, we introduced pay-as-you-go document processing services to give you more flexibility to use Syntex. Throughout the next few months we’ll bring four new services into general availability. Like our document processing services, these will be available to most Microsoft 365 commercial users on a pay-as-you-go basis, without any additional licensing – pay for what you use, and don’t pay for what you don’t use.

Let's dive in and discover what's new.

• Syntex Optical Character Recognition (OCR). With Syntex OCR, images containing text, both from SharePoint and Exchange, become searchable, which also enables additional compliance scenarios like data loss prevention (DLP). Syntex OCR is coming to public preview at the end of April.

Figure 2 Microsoft Syntex Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

• Syntex Image Tagging. Make it easier to search for images with Image Tagging, which assigns descriptive keywords to images. With this Syntex service, it’s much easier to find specific images. Image Tagging will be generally available at the end of May.

Figure 3 Microsoft Syntex Image Tagging

• Syntex Content Assembly. Streamline your content generation processes, especially when you’re working with large volumes of repetitive business documents such as statements, invoices, or proposals. Syntex Content Assembly automatically generates new documents with specific data points, based on precise templates defined by business users, from new or existing documents. Reducing the labor-intensive manual creation of standardized documents saves you time and reduces errors. Content Assembly will be generally available as a pay-as-you-go meter beginning in May.

Figure 4 Microsoft Syntex Content Assembly

• Syntex Translation. As business becomes increasingly more global, make your content instantly more accessible with Syntex Translation. Syntex enables you to translate documents quickly and accurately among dozens of languages based on specific metadata. Translation will be generally availability in June.

Figure 5 Microsoft Syntex Translation

More capabilities for you

To help you get even more value from your content, we’re bringing additional Syntex services to Microsoft 365. Syntex has already delivered impactful new capabilities for your content:

• Content Query – filter large libraries with custom metadata in a form-based interface.
• Universal Annotation – add ink, comments, @mentions and more to many additional file types (more than just Office) supported by our file viewer
• Accelerators – easily apply solution templates for common scenarios like contract management and accounts payable.
• Taxonomy Services – admin reporting on term set usage and easy import from SKOS-formatted taxonomies.
• Rules – lightweight automation for common operations like file alerts, copies and moves.

We think many people can benefit from these capabilities. That’s why we’ll be moving these services from the SharePoint Syntex seat license and making them available to all Microsoft 365 E3, E5, A3, and A5 users this summer. As a result, we will retire the SharePoint Syntex per-user license on July 1st, 2023, and transition the remaining functionality not detailed in the list above fully to a pay-as-you-go model with Microsoft Syntex.

Learn more about pay-as-you-go: Microsoft Syntex pay-as-you-go will be generally available on March 7, 2023 - Microsoft Community Hub.

Conclusion

Ready to take your productivity to the next level with Syntex? Come talk to us at one of the upcoming events we’ll be at this spring (click the link for event discount codes), including AIIM23, DSF ‘23, and Microsoft 365 Conference. Or register to join this webinar, “Is Content AI a Game Changer?”, with AIIM and Microsoft experts on April 19 at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET.

If we don’t catch you at one of these events, you can do the next best thing - Join our mailing list for updates, release info, and events. Thank you.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can I still buy the SharePoint Syntex seat license?

Yes. The seat license will be available for purchase through July 1st, 2023. For services that are transitioning to the pay-as-you-go model that are included in the seat license, there will be no consumption cost through the term of your agreement.

Can I put a price cap on consumption?

Price caps are not available with pay-as-you-go services; however, you can set alerts with Microsoft Cost Management.

Does pay-as-you-go affect Power Platform licensing?

There are no changes to Power Platform licensing. For additional details on Power Platform licensing visit https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/pricing-billing-skus