You have a Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription and 100 Windows 10 Pro devices that are joined to Microsoft Entra. You purchase Microsoft 365 E5 licenses for all users. You need to upgrade the

MDT lite-touch deployment is an imaging solution for deploying operating systems, which involves wiping and reloading, incurring significant administrative effort.

Windows Subscription Activation allows existing Windows 10 Pro devices (version 1703 or later) that are Microsoft Entra joined to automatically upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise when a user with an eligible subscription (like Microsoft 365 E5) signs into the device. This method requires no reboots and automatically manages the license through the subscription, minimizing administrative effort.

Performing an in-place upgrade with Windows installation media would require manual intervention or scripting on each of the 100 devices, which is not minimal administrative effort.

Windows Autopilot is for provisioning new devices or resetting existing ones to prepare them for deployment, not for in-place edition upgrades of already deployed and configured devices.