Enterprise-Scale Optimization, Smarter M365 Insight, and the Next Leap in Azure Financial Planning
Cloud teams today don’t just need insights — they need execution. They need forecasting tools that reflect real-world projects, recommendations that tie directly to business risk, license analytics that eliminate guesswork, and visibility that improves the pace of decision-making. Surveil is the “optimization engine of record” — making v4.2.2 one of our most strategically meaningful releases to date.
This release introduces major enhancements across Azure financial planning, M365 optimization, platform reporting, and partner tooling — all designed to help enterprises and CSPs accelerate action, strengthen accountability, and realize measurable value faster.
At the center of this release is the Enhanced Azure Recommendations Planner, a major upgrade that reshapes how large organizations process thousands of recommendations at scale.
Below is the full breakdown and why it matters.
Spotlight Feature: Azure Recommendations Planner
From “Too Many Recommendations” to Enterprise-Scale Actionability
Most enterprises sit on thousands of cost optimization recommendations — yet only a small fraction ever get implemented. Not because the insights are wrong, but because the workflow breaks down:
- Too many recommendations
- Not enough context
- No clear ownership
- Limited trust
- ITSM bottlenecks
- and overwhelming manual effort
The enhanced Recommendations Planner solves these problems head-on, transforming cost optimization from an overwhelming backlog into a structured, executable action plan.
What’s new: Major Enhancements for Scale
- Campaign-based optimization workflows (group related recommendations into actionable initiatives)
- Risk scoring and impact context to build trust and guide decision-making
- Distributed ownership with assignment at business-unit or team level
- Mandatory comments + metadata management for auditability
- Bulk ticketing & workflow orchestration for large-scale execution
- Status automation (e.g., recommendations that stall for 30 days automatically move into “Re-consider”)
- Improved performance, filtering, and Smart Tag alignment
👉 Why it matters: Action Velocity Becomes a Measurable Outcome:
With these upgrades, enterprises can now:
- Accelerate Decision-Making at Scale
Move from weeks of review to hours of clear prioritization. - Drive Ownership Across Business Units
FinOps no longer becomes a bottleneck — teams own their savings roadmap. - Build Trust in Optimization
Every recommendation now includes context, dependencies, and business impact. - Execute in Bulk Through ITSM
Turn 150 similar recommendations into one well-defined initiative. - Track Optimization Like a Program, Not a Guess
See who’s acting, who’s stalling, and where the biggest opportunities lie.
Surveil for Azure
Project Budget Management Enhancements
Plan multi-phase Azure projects the way they actually unfold.
Azure projects rarely follow a single start date or linear cost pattern. Migrations, new workloads, and phased rollouts introduce staggered spend that traditional budget tools simply can’t represent. v4.2.2 introduces phased budgeting built for real-world cloud programs.
What’s new
- Add multiple project phases within a single project
- Assign unique start dates and expected monthly costs per phase
- Automatic forward projection — no end date required
- Cleaner UI for complex project planning
- Eliminates the need to create multiple “project clones”
👉 Why it matters: Enterprises can finally model Azure project spend with accuracy. Finance teams get credible forecasts; program owners get a single view of total project cost; and FinOps teams stay ahead of variance before it turns into budget risk.
Fabric Reserved Instance Purchase Recommendations
Reserved Instance intelligence comes to Microsoft Fabric.
Fabric workloads often run predictably but pay-as-you-go pricing penalizes that predictability. Surveil’s new Fabric RI engine analyzes SKU consumption trends and identifies optimal RI commitments.
What’s new
- Consumption-based RI recommendations
- Savings projections based on actual usage
- Guidance tailored to Fabric capacity SKUs
👉 Why it matters: Fabric customers can now tap into the same RI savings strategies that transformed Azure cost optimization — potentially recovering significant budget in environments with predictable capacity needs.
Customer-Discounted Savings Calculations
Savings are now calculated using your actual Azure prices and not public retail.
Optimization decisions must be defensible, especially during budgeting and executive reporting. Surveil now uses customer-specific price sheets to calculate all Azure recommendation savings.
What’s new
- Fully discount-aware recommendation engine
- Applies to RI, disk, and broader cost optimization pipelines
- Accurate ROI projections aligned to real contractual pricing
👉 Why it matters: This eliminates inflated savings estimates and replaces them with transparent, defensible numbers that finance, procurement, and leadership trust.
Smart Tags: New “Equals To” Operator
More precision in how resources are grouped and governed.
Smart Tags now support exact-match Azure Tag conditions to enhance chargeback/showback and governance models.
👉 Why it matters: FinOps, finance, and engineering teams can model cloud spend with greater fidelity which is essential for unit economics, cost allocation, and multi-team accountability.
Azure Power BI Template Enhancements
Cleaner UI, Stronger Insights, and Partner-Requested Improvements
The Azure analytics suite has been updated for readability and depth.
What’s new
- Visual refinements across Azure Core v4.2
- Reservation Resource visibility
- Credits and ESR reporting improvements
- Cosmos DB enhancements
- VM resizing savings added
- Updated cost overview
- Reservation performance insights
👉 Why it matters: Improves clarity, storytelling, and executive consumption of Azure cost data — especially for partners delivering managed FinOps services.
Surveil for M365
Pricing Management for M365
Expanded price data across every subscription for deeper decision-making.
Modern M365 licensing requires precise pricing control — not tenant-wide estimates. The Pricing Management module in M365 now exposes additional SKU-level price intelligence.
What’s new
- Pricing per LicenseSKU, subscriptionID, term, start/end date, billing cycle
- End customers can see pricing from multiple CSP partners
- Support for future scheduled pricing (coming next quarter)
- Supports historical pricing imports via Cloudmore, CloudBlue, etc. (coming next quarter)
👉 Why it matters: CSPs and enterprises finally get the pricing accuracy required for renewals, cost modeling, billing reconciliation, cost allocation, cross-tenant license comparison, and multi-partner transparency.
Enterprise-Scale M365 Demo Environment (Partner-Only)
Show Surveil’s M365 intelligence the way Enterprises actually operate.
Partners now have access to a hyper-realistic M365 demo tenant designed to mirror enterprise complexity without exposing real customer data.
What’s new
- 20,000+ user accounts
- Full license mix across E5, E3, O365, EMS, Project, Visio, PBI Pro
- 2,500 Copilot candidates + 500 licensed Copilot users
- Smart Tag structures for country, LOB, department, cost center
- Populated savings signals (10–25% potential)
- Recent Defender & Exchange API data included
- Anonymized dataset with regular refresh cycles
👉 Why it matters: Partners can finally demonstrate Surveil’s M365 and Copilot intelligence at enterprise scale that unlocks stronger sales conversations and reducing pre-sales friction.
Microsoft 365 Contract Center: Smarter Forecasting & Renewal Readiness
Surveil’s Contract Center continues to evolve into the industry’s most powerful, data-driven workspace for managing Microsoft 365 renewals. In this release, we’ve expanded its forecasting intelligence, improved recommendation clarity, and added proactive alerts—giving enterprises and partners a sharper, more confident way to prepare for upcoming contract cycles.
What’s new in this release:
- Customizable License Categories
- Enhanced Recommendation Tracking
- Renewal Alerts (180-Day Warning Banner)
- Recommended vs. Target Quantities
👉 Why it matters: Renewals are becoming more complex, more expensive, and far less negotiable. These enhancements give customers and partners earlier visibility, clearer insights, and better alignment that strengthens financial planning and ensures no renewal ever catches you off guard.
Benefits Tracker: Modernized UI & Performance
Built for speed, clarity, and enterprise-scale analysis.
The Benefits Tracker has been redesigned for a cleaner, faster, more intuitive experience.
👉 Why it matters: Teams can assess value realized, savings achieved, and optimization progress faster and with more confidence — a critical requirement for executive reporting and FinOps governance.
Copilot → Teams Premium Downgrade Intelligence
Protect Copilot ROI by assigning licenses to the right users
Not every Copilot user is a power user and many rely solely on meeting intelligence. Those users don’t need a full Copilot license.
What’s new:
- Automatically identifies Copilot users using only meeting AI features
- Flags users not leveraging Copilot’s broader capabilities
- Recommends downgrading to Teams Premium where appropriate
- Optimizes M365 licensing costs without sacrificing productivity
👉 Why it matters: Enterprises finally get a data-driven path to right-size Copilot adoption and safeguard budget while keeping essential AI capabilities intact.
Cloud App Discovery: Expanded Insights
Deeper intelligence into SaaS usage, shadow IT, and application risk.
Surveil now provides a more complete view of cloud apps used across the business.
What’s new:
- Application-level security risk scores
- Traffic volume (GB) per app
- Last-seen dates + long-term adoption patterns
- Smart Tag filtering by business unit
- Shadow IT visibility and risk identification
👉 Why it matters: Security, IT, and compliance teams gain the intelligence needed to assess risk, control SaaS sprawl, and enforce governance with clarity.
M365 Health Check: New UI Dashboard
A Complete visual refresh built for leadership insight.
Loads in under 2 seconds — fully UI-based, no Power BI dependency.
What’s new:
- SyncFusion visualization framework
- Dynamic resizing
- Fully interactive UI
- Senior management persona view
- Rapid performance improvements
- 100% PBI-free experience
👉 Why it matters: A dramatically better M365 health storytelling experience — ideal for CIO reviews, security briefings, and partner demos.
Surveil Navigator
Navigator CRM Integration (HubSpot)
Bringing Navigator’s revenue intelligence directly Into your CRM workflow
Partners have asked for a way to bring Surveil’s sales revenue intelligence into the systems where their sellers already operate. With v4.2.2, Navigator introduces the first phase of its CRM integration — beginning with HubSpot and expanding to Dynamics 365 and Salesforce in upcoming releases.
👉 Why it matters: Navigator is no longer just an insights engine. It becomes a revenue system of record for partner sellers.
- Sales sees changes instantly: Optimization shifts, usage patterns, or new opportunities flagged by Navigator appear directly in HubSpot.
- No more system switching: Sellers act in the CRM they trust, using data they previously never had access to.
- Cleaner workflows: Navigator insights flow naturally into HubSpot sequences, qualification steps, forecasting views, and opportunity management.
- More accurate pipeline: CRM fields update from real Microsoft tenant data, improving forecast confidence and partner–customer alignment.
This integration lays the foundation for bidirectional sync, automated opportunity creation, and CRM-native campaign reporting in future releases.
Navigator Campaign Engine Refactor
Turn campaigns into predictable, data-driven revenue drivers.
Navigator’s Campaign Engine has been redesigned from the ground up to give partners deeper targeting power, richer datasets, and more flexible segmentation. Partners can now build their own campaigns directly from Navigator’s underlying intelligence layers — enabling sharper, more relevant sales motions.
👉 Why it matters: For enterprises migrating from on-prem Oracle workloads to OCI, this capability enables accurate cost tracking, credit utilization management, and true multi-cloud financial parity — all inside the Surveil platform.
What’s new: This is one of Navigator’s largest architectural upgrades and a major evolution for partner sales engines.
- Precision targeting: Partners can build campaigns tailored to real customer conditions, not generic filters.
- Better opportunity discovery: Combining data across Azure, M365, and optimization insights reveals cross-sell, upsell, and renewal opportunities earlier.
- Richer segmentation: Example — “Customers using Azure Service X in Region Y with rising consumption and poor governance signals.”
- Faster sales execution: CRM integration pushes campaign results straight into seller workflows.
- Scalable demand generation: Campaigns transform from marketing exercises into data-driven revenue plays rooted in tenant reality.
Stay Informed and Take the Next Step
- Already using Surveil? Log into the platform and click the Help icon in the top-right corner, then select Release Notes to explore all the latest features
- New to Surveil? Contact us to speak with a Cloud Specialist and discover how Surveil can help your organization unlock savings, strengthen governance, and drive smarter cloud decisions