© 2023 Created by Sameh Younis
Microsoft Agent 365 – the control plane for AI agents
As organizations start embracing AI agents, two questions keep coming up:
❓ How do we plug agents into real workflows alongside people?
❓ How do we keep them secure, compliant, and under control at scale?
In my new infographic, I unpack Microsoft Agent 365, introduced in early access at Ignite as the enterprise control plane for AI agents:
🔹 What is Agent 365?
✅ An infrastructure layer to secure, deploy, and govern AI agents across the enterprise
✅ Not another Copilot or agent builder, but the place where agents get identity, policies, and oversight
✅ Built on familiar foundations: Microsoft Entra, Defender, Intune, Purview and Microsoft 365 apps
🔹 What problems does it solve?
✅ Turns agents into first-class participants in the digital workplace
✅ Internal agent catalog so employees can find and “hire” approved agents
✅ Agents collaborating in Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint and OneDrive, in the flow of work
✅ Gives IT and Security full visibility and control
✅ Unified registry and inventory, including shadow or rogue agents
✅ Agents treated like users from a governance perspective, with owners, audit trails, and standard policies
🔹 In this infographic, I break down Microsoft Agent 365, announced in early access at Ignite as the enterprise control plane for AI agents:
✅ IT Teams using Microsoft Agents 365 – focusing on the five core capabilities for managing agents at scale: Registry, Access control, Visualization, Interoperability, and Security.
✅ Security Teams using core Microsoft Security products – how existing Microsoft security investments extend naturally to agents:
✔️ Microsoft Entra for Entra Agent ID, unified agent inventory, and conditional access.
✔️ Microsoft Purview for data labels, compliance policies, and reporting.
✔️ Microsoft Defender for security posture, threat detection, and threat remediation across the agent estate.
✅ Dev Teams – how Microsoft Foundry provides the Foundry Control Plane to observe and govern agents during development and testing, then hand them over to Agent 365 for production control.
🔹 Who is this for?
✅ CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and IT leaders in medium and large enterprises who want to embrace AI agents at scale without sacrificing security, compliance, or operational control.
🔹 How to try it?
✅ Agent 365 is available today in early access via the Microsoft Frontier program for eligible Microsoft 365 customers through the Microsoft 365 admin center.
💭 If you are thinking about how to bring order to the coming wave of AI agents in your environment, Agent 365 is designed to be that control plane.
