Microsoft’s Agent 365 Aims to Take the Lead as the AI Bot Leader

A novel tool from Microsoft, known as Agent 365, aims to assist businesses in managing their increasing number of robotic assistants.

Agent 365 is not designed for creating enterprise AI tools; rather, it serves as a management platform for them, akin to overseeing human employees. Organizations utilizing generative AI agents in their digital environments can leverage Agent 365 to streamline their expanding array of bots, monitor their performance, and adjust their configurations. The tool is being launched today as part of Microsoft’s early access initiative.

In essence, Microsoft has established a monitorable workspace for these agents. “The tools you use to oversee people, devices, and applications today should ideally be adapted to manage agents as well in the future,” states Charles Lamanna, a leader in business and industry for Microsoft’s Copilot, its AI chatbot.

Lamanna envisions a scenario where organizations rely on significantly more agents than human workers. For instance, in a company with 100,000 employees, he anticipates the utilization of “half a million to a million agents,” engaging in tasks that range from basic email sorting to overseeing the entire procurement process for a business. He asserts that Microsoft’s own operations utilize millions of agents.

This vast array of bots, which are authorized to take actions within a company’s software and automate parts of an employee’s tasks, could quickly become difficult to monitor. Insufficient oversight could further expose businesses to security risks. Agent 365 provides a solution for managing all your bots, regardless of whether they were developed with Microsoft’s tools or through a third-party service.

The primary feature of Agent 365 is a registry that consolidates all active agents within an organization in one location, complete with unique identification numbers for each and information about how they are utilized by staff. This is also where users can modify the settings for agents and specify which components of a business’s software each agent is permitted to access.

Courtesy of Microsoft