Microsoft unveils Agent 365 to help IT manage AI ‘agent sprawl’

As businesses begin deploying AI agents in greater numbers, IT teams will need to manage and secure those AI systems as they connect to corporate data. That’s the idea behind Microsoft’s Agent 365 (A365), a new “control plane” that lets customers deploy and govern the use of agents. The A365 announcement was made in conjunction with the company’s Microsoft Ignite event in San Francisco.

“While we’re not quite there yet, agent sprawl will become a key issue in the near future” with agents produced for specific tasks and employees creating their own, said Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. “Microsoft wants to control the agents within their infrastructure, much as it does with other Microsoft 365 and Office 365 environments.”

A365 functions as the central record of agents that access data in an organization’s Microsoft 365 environment. That includes agents built with Microsoft’s own tools, such as Copilot Studio, as well as open-source frameworks and third-party agents from the likes of Adobe, n8n, ServiceNow, and Workday.

Accessed via the Microsoft 365 admin console, A365 allows IT staffers to manage which agents employees can use and restrict the data and resources available to those agents.

“IT leaders can track every agent being used, built, or brought into the organization, eliminating blind spots and reducing risk,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft president, Business Apps and Agents, said in a blog post Tuesday.

A visual dashboard displays connections between agents, data and workers, with real-time analytics around agent behavior and performance. 

“Even though it is early days…, there are quickly becoming too many agents to manage manually,” said Allie Mellen, an analyst at Forrester. A tool such as A365 can help IT and security teams “track, manage, and secure the agents in their organization,” she said. “AI agents are a new attack surface that we must protect given their access to sensitive data.”

A365 builds on three existing Microsoft tools: Defender, Entra, and Purview. Microsoft Defender helps detect and block known and emerging threats that target agents, while Purview, Microsoft’s data governance tool, is used to prevent agents from accessing — and then leaking — sensitive data.

Each agent is assigned a unique Microsoft Entra ID for IT to track usage and apply “adaptive, risk-based policies,” that can shut down compromised agents. “Microsoft has correctly identified that if agents are to do real work, they need ’employee’ IDs, not just software licenses,” said Alastair Woolcock, vice president analyst at Gartner. 

The use of A365 to extend Entra and Defender to the digital workforce means Microsoft is effectively “hiring agents into the org chart,” he said.  

It’s a move that forces other tech firms to either integrate with Microsoft’s governance layer or risk having their agents blocked as shadow IT, said Woolcock. “It’s a smart approach as companies and governments will need a control plane for multi-agent orchestration, where it’s not just Microsoft’s agents, but all agents under Agent 365,” he said. 

Several software vendors, including ServiceNow, Google, and Amazon Web Services are all vying to offer the main tool organizations use to govern agents. “Organizations won’t want to govern agents via a multitude of control planes and vendors; they’ll need one as a global standard,” said Woolcock. 

Microsoft’s proximity to end user workflows with Office apps and Teams gives the company a unique leverage point, he said. And if it integrates seamlessly with existing Microsoft tools, A365 could spare enterprise IT teams from relying on additional systems to manage agents.

There are still questions about how the tool will function in practice. “If I obtain agents that are not Microsoft-created, will I still be able to insert my third-party agents into this new infrastructure?” said Gold. “Microsoft says yes, but we’ll need to see how that plays out, much as it took some time to play out with PC and cloud apps. But overall, this is a win-win situation for both MSFT and its customers.”

Agent 365 is available now in early access via Microsoft’s Frontier program. Microsoft plans to offer more details on pricing closer to general availability.