Microsoft rolls out Agent 365 ‘control plane’ for AI agents

Microsoft Agent 365 has been introduced as a control plane to help organizations deploy and manage AI agents at scale.

Unveiled November 18, Agent 365 is available through Microsoft’s Frontier program for early access to AI technologies. Agent 365 lets users manage an organization’s agents at scale, regardless of where these agents are built or acquired, Microsoft said. Agent 365 integrates with Microsoft productivity and business tools, allowing employees to work smarter, faster, and more creatively with agents, according to Microsoft.

Agent 365 integrates with Microsoft’s security solutions including Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview to protect and govern agents; integrates with the Microsoft 365 productivity apps including Word, Excel, Outlook, and the Work IQ intelligence layer to provide work context and accelerate productivity; and integrates with the Microsoft 365 admin center to manage agents. The suite delivers unified observability across an entire agent fleet through telemetry, dashboards, and alerts, allowing IT organizations to track every agent being used, built, or brought into the organization, Microsoft said.

IT administrators can get early access to Agent 365 by signing up online. Microsoft said that Agent 365 unlocks five capabilities intended to make enterprise-scale AI possible:

Registry, to view all agents in an organization, including agents with agent ID, agents registered by the user, and shadow agents.

Access control, to bring agents under management and limit access only to needed resources.

Visualization, to explore connections between agents, people, and data, and monitor agent performance.

Interoperability, by equipping agents with applications and data to simplify human-agent workflows. They would be connected to Work IQ to provide context of work to onboard into business processes.

Security, to protect agents from threats and vulnerabilities and remediate attacks that target agents.