Announced 9 March 2026 and generally available 1 May 2026, M365 E7 consolidates four major Microsoft platforms into a single SKU at $99 per user per month.
For Australian Defence and Government programmes, E7 represents a meaningful simplification: one contractual surface, one identity model, one compliance posture — instead of the multi-SKU sprawl that has characterised enterprise Microsoft deployments since E3/E5 launched.
The complexity now sits in the deployment architecture, not the procurement.
E7 is licensable. That doesn’t make it deployable.
Defence and Federal Government programmes deploying E7 face the same questions they faced with E5 — only sharper. How does Copilot interact with classified or PROTECTED data? Which Agent 365 patterns are compatible with ISM controls? How do Entra ID Governance lifecycles map to Defence personnel processes? What conditional access policies stop Copilot indexing data it shouldn’t?
None of these have packaged answers from Microsoft. They require deployment expertise grounded in both Microsoft’s platform and the Australian Government security frameworks.
Every E7 architectural pattern we deploy is mapped against the ISM. We do not adapt commercial best practice to retrospectively fit the controls. Our reference architectures begin with the ISM and work outward to the Microsoft platform.
We have spent years inside SECRET-level on-prem Defence environments. We understand classified data handling not as a Microsoft licensing tier, but as a discipline. That instinct shapes how we configure Copilot, Agent 365 and DLP for programmes that cannot afford to leak.
Northforge personnel hold current AGSVA security clearances at the level the work demands. No foreign-owned parent company. No offshore delivery. The team that scopes the E7 engagement is the team that delivers it — in Australia, under Australian law.
Building Strength. — Forging Futures.