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Microsoft Ignite 2025 Unveils Agent‑Centric AI Innovations for Enterprise
At Microsoft Ignite, currently taking place in San Francisco, Calif., the company rolled out its vision for the next phase of enterprise AI by centering on agents -- autonomous and semi-autonomous software entities working alongside people.
The core announcement, made during Tuesday's keynote talk, is Agent 365, described by Microsoft as the "control plane for AI agents" that enables organizations to deploy, organize and govern agents securely and at enterprise scale.
"As agents multiply in numbers and sophistication, companies face a new kind of challenge: how to manage and govern agents responsibly and at scale, without rebuilding the trusted systems they rely on," Microsoft said in an accompanying blog post.
Agent 365 brings together key tools like identity management, access control, monitoring, and security, so IT and DevOps teams can manage AI agents just like they manage users or apps. That means they can track what each agent is doing, control what it can access, and make sure it follows company policies. It also supports agents built on Microsoft tech, open-source platforms or other cloud services so they all work under the same set of rules, no matter where they come from.
Microsoft's new agent control central is available through Frontier, the company's preview program for AI features and tools.
Beyond the control plane, Microsoft announced multiple agent-led applications:
- The Sales Development Agent, now in the Frontier preview, aims to free up human sales reps by researching prospects, generating personalized outreach and following up autonomously, while handing off leads to humans when needed. It's built on the Agent 365 platform and tied into Microsoft's security and productivity foundation.
- Agents within Microsoft Teams channels can now collaborate with other agents and apps via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling workflows such as pulling risk items from Jira or Asana, scheduling meetings and working cross-tool.
- Three new agents powered by Work IQ (the Workforce Insights Agent, People Agent and Learning Agent) are now available in preview. They provide managers real-time workforce analytics, help users discover colleagues and skills and deliver microlearning experiences tailored to roles and organizational goals.
- The Teams Admin Agent, available in the Teams admin center preview, enables IT administrators to automate tasks such as user provisioning and meeting monitoring through an autonomous agent, thereby reducing manual burden and enhancing policy uniformity.
- The SharePoint Admin Agent, now in preview in the SharePoint admin center, uses AI to identify inactive or ownerless sites, overshared content and permissions sprawl, then applies automated actions to archive or adjust access, helping governance scale with growing Copilot and agent adoption.