News
Microsoft Pushes AI Governance With Launch of Agent 365 and New E7 Suite
- By Chris Paoli
- May 06, 2026
Microsoft has officially launched Agent 365, a platform designed to help enterprises monitor, govern and secure AI agents across corporate environments, while also introducing its new Microsoft 365 E7 subscription bundle, now generally available.
Agent 365 acts as a centralized control layer for AI agents operating within Microsoft and third-party ecosystems, including locally deployed agents running on employee devices. Microsoft positioned the release as part of a broader push to help organizations manage “agent sprawl” as autonomous AI tools become more deeply embedded in enterprise workflows, now available at $15 per user per month.
"With Agent 365, we can scale and govern AI agents with confidence, while maintaining enterprise-grade security and control," said Yuji Shono, head of the global AI office at NTT Data Group Corp., in a blog announcement. "Agent 365 enables organizations to move beyond experimentation, driving tangible business value and innovation through trusted AI adoption."
The platform will also work with third-party services, including AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud and development platforms such as Kasisto, Kore and n8n. Microsoft said partners including Adobe, Nvidia, Zendesk and Celonis have already built agents designed to plug into Agent 365's management framework.
Microsoft also announced new tools Thursday for finding and managing so-called shadow AI. Defender and Intune will be able to detect unmanaged agents, including OpenClaw and Claude Code, running on Windows devices. Security teams will also get more context about those agents, including which devices they are running on, which Model Context Protocol servers they use and which cloud resources they can access.
"Enterprises can easily build AI agents today, but scaling them with trust and governance is where most initiatives stall," said Raj Koneru, chief executive of Kore.ai. "With Kore.ai deeply integrated into Microsoft Agent 365, identity, security and governance are built in from the start -- empowering enterprises to move from pilots to AI at scale with confidence."
Microsoft 365 E7, the company's new Frontier Suite, bundles Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft Entra Suite and Agent 365 for $99 per user per month, which is below the combined cost of purchasing each component separately. The suite is designed to provide what Microsoft describes as the convergence of "intelligence and trust" needed for enterprise AI deployment.
"Frontier Transformation is about fundamentally changing how organizations operate -- embedding AI into everyday workflows to accelerate decisions, improve outcomes and drive measurable business impact," the company said in its announcement.
The suite includes identity and network access controls through Microsoft Entra Suite, which now extend to Agent 365 to inspect agent traffic and help block malicious prompt-based attacks. Microsoft also previewed Windows 365 for Agents, a cloud PC service purpose-built for running AI agents in managed environments.