Breaking News
Microsoft has launched Agent 365, a new platform designed to help organisations deploy, monitor and govern AI agents across their business operations. Announced on 18 November 2025, it’s intended as “the control plane for AI agents” — whether built on Microsoft tech, open-source frameworks or third-party systems.
In its blog post, Microsoft highlights that as AI agents proliferate — with an estimate of about 1.3 billion agents by 2028 — organisations face the twin challenges of scaling them and maintaining oversight, security and compliance.
"Agent 365 aims to tackle that by offering five core capabilities: registry, access control, visualization, interoperability and security," the company said in a statement.
With the Registry function, IT teams can maintain a single inventory of all agents operating inside the organisation — authorised or shadow-deployed — and even quarantine unauthorised ones.
The Access Control layer lets admins assign unique agent IDs, apply policy templates and enforce least-privilege access for agents. On the Visualization front, Agent 365 provides dashboards linking agents with users and data workflows, enabling insights into performance, usage and potential risk.
The Interoperability capability allows agents to connect to existing Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, Teams, SharePoint) as well as open-source frameworks and partner clouds, giving organisations freedom of choice.
Finally, Microsoft emphasises Security, integrating tools like Microsoft Defender and Purview to detect agent threats, apply policy enforcement and protect sensitive data from misuse by agents.
Microsoft says Agent 365 marks a shift from early, isolated AI agent experiments to full enterprise-scale deployments where agents are treated as first-class entities — alongside users, applications and devices.
Organisations looking to get started can access Agent 365 via the Microsoft 365 admin center and join Microsoft’s early-access program to test scenarios and adopt the new approach.
With AI agents increasingly embedded in business workflows — handling tasks from customer service to data analysis and process automation — the launch of Agent 365 reflects Microsoft’s strategy to provide enterprises both the intelligence and the governance layer needed to scale safely. For companies adopting large volumes of agents, Agent 365 promises to simplify oversight, reduce risk and integrate agents into the IT ecosystem in a manageable way.
In its blog post, Microsoft highlights that as AI agents proliferate — with an estimate of about 1.3 billion agents by 2028 — organisations face the twin challenges of scaling them and maintaining oversight, security and compliance.
"Agent 365 aims to tackle that by offering five core capabilities: registry, access control, visualization, interoperability and security," the company said in a statement.
With the Registry function, IT teams can maintain a single inventory of all agents operating inside the organisation — authorised or shadow-deployed — and even quarantine unauthorised ones.
The Access Control layer lets admins assign unique agent IDs, apply policy templates and enforce least-privilege access for agents. On the Visualization front, Agent 365 provides dashboards linking agents with users and data workflows, enabling insights into performance, usage and potential risk.
The Interoperability capability allows agents to connect to existing Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, Teams, SharePoint) as well as open-source frameworks and partner clouds, giving organisations freedom of choice.
Finally, Microsoft emphasises Security, integrating tools like Microsoft Defender and Purview to detect agent threats, apply policy enforcement and protect sensitive data from misuse by agents.
Microsoft says Agent 365 marks a shift from early, isolated AI agent experiments to full enterprise-scale deployments where agents are treated as first-class entities — alongside users, applications and devices.
Organisations looking to get started can access Agent 365 via the Microsoft 365 admin center and join Microsoft’s early-access program to test scenarios and adopt the new approach.
With AI agents increasingly embedded in business workflows — handling tasks from customer service to data analysis and process automation — the launch of Agent 365 reflects Microsoft’s strategy to provide enterprises both the intelligence and the governance layer needed to scale safely. For companies adopting large volumes of agents, Agent 365 promises to simplify oversight, reduce risk and integrate agents into the IT ecosystem in a manageable way.
See What’s Next in Tech With the Fast Forward Newsletter
Tweets From @varindiamag
Nothing to see here - yet
When they Tweet, their Tweets will show up here.
