11 months ago
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Over the past year, we’ve seen AI agents germinate from experimental tools to indispensable components of endeavor systems. From elemental punctual and effect bots to agents that enactment autonomously connected your behalf, this displacement marks a caller epoch of bundle plan wherever quality is nary longer tied to static interfaces oregon azygous applications.
At Microsoft, we’ve seen this translation firsthand. Azure AI Foundry is present utilized by developers astatine much than 70,000 enterprises and integer autochthonal companies, including Atomicwork, Epic, Fujitsu, Gainsight, H&R Block, and LG Electronics, to design, customize, and negociate AI apps and agents. In conscionable 4 months, implicit 10,000 organizations person adopted our caller Agent Service to build, deploy, and standard agentic systems. More than 230,000 organizations, including 90% of the Fortune 500, person already utilized Microsoft Copilot Studio.
As agents instrumentality connected much blase roles, they request entree not lone to divers models and tools but besides to 1 another. That is wherefore we are committed to advancing unfastened protocols similar Agent2Agent (A2A), coming soon to Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, which volition alteration agents to collaborate crossed clouds, platforms, and organizational boundaries.
We’re aligning with the broader manufacture propulsion for shared cause protocols—doing what we’ve ever done: embracing openness, supporting real-world developers, and turning experimentation into enterprise-grade platforms. Our extremity is simple: empower some pro and national developers to physique agents that interoperate crossed clouds and frameworks.
We judge that Microsoft Copilot volition empower each worker and enactment arsenic the “UI for AI” to link with agents and agentic systems—networks of agents that reason, act, and accommodate crossed boundaries. As customers standard these systems, interoperability is nary longer optional. They privation their agents to orchestrate tasks that span vendors, clouds, and information silos. They privation control, visibility, and trust—without being locked in.
A2A tin alteration structured cause communication—exchanging goals, managing state, invoking actions, and returning results securely and observably. Developers tin usage tools they know, similar Semantic Kernel oregon LangChain, and inactive interoperate. Every telephone travels done enterprise-grade safeguards: Microsoft Entra, communal TLS, Azure AI Content Safety, and afloat audit logs. Azure AI Foundry is built with spot by default, and arsenic cause ecosystems turn much unfastened and distributed, safety, compliance, and accountability stay first-class.
What we are delivering
With enactment for A2A:
- Azure AI Foundry customers tin physique complex, multi-agent workflows that span interior copilots, spouse tools, and accumulation infrastructure—while maintaining governance and SLAs.
- Copilot Studio agents volition beryllium capable to securely invoke outer agents, including those built with different platforms oregon hosted extracurricular Microsoft.
- Enterprises summation a way to composable, intelligent systems that standard crossed organizational and unreality boundaries.
- Microsoft’s contributions volition accelerate improvement and adoption of the unfastened A2A protocol crossed the industry.
This is conscionable 1 measurement connected a longer journey. As we’ve done with innovations similar Autogen, Semantic Kernel, our contributions to Model Context Protocol (MCP), and our catalog of unfastened models, we volition proceed to germinate the level to enactment the protocols, models, and frameworks that substance astir to developers and enterprises. We spot protocols similar A2A and MCP arsenic important steps successful the absorption of realizing our imaginativeness for the agentic future.
What’s next
Agentic computing isn’t a trend—it’s a foundational shift. It changes however bundle is built, however decisions are made, and however worth is created.
We person joined the A2A moving radical connected GitHub to lend to the spec and tooling. The A2A nationalist preview successful Foundry and Copilot Studio volition get soon.
By supporting A2A and gathering connected our unfastened orchestration platform, we’re laying the instauration for the adjacent procreation of software—collaborative, observable, and adaptive by design. The champion agents won’t unrecorded successful 1 app oregon cloud; they’ll run successful the travel of work, spanning models, domains, and ecosystems. We’re gathering that aboriginal with openness astatine the center—because agents shouldn’t beryllium islands, and quality should enactment crossed boundaries, conscionable similar the satellite it serves.
Getting started
We’ve introduced a new illustration successful Semantic Kernel (available successful Python) that demonstrates however 2 section agents tin collaborate utilizing the A2A protocol. In this example, the agents enactment unneurotic to program a question itinerary and grip currency conversions, showcasing seamless interoperability without the request for customized orchestration code.