Microsoft made waves at Ignite 2024 with the announcement that 10 autonomous AI agents are now available for business use. Microsoft effectively declared that AI agents are ready for prime time: achieving what others have yet to achieve.

Microsoft’s turnkey agents focus on core business operations – from CRM and supply chain management to financial reconciliation. While competitors like Salesforce and ServiceNow offer AI agent solutions in a limited number of areas, Microsoft has created an extensive agent ecosystem that extends beyond its own platform. The system includes 1,400 third-party connectors and supports customization in more than 1,800 major language models. The scale of adoption is just as great: 100,000 organizations are already creating or changing agents, Microsoft says, and deployment rates doubled last quarter – adoption rates dwarf those of competitors

In my three-part video series with generative AI developer and expert Sam Witteveen, we explore what this move means for enterprises, why Microsoft is leading the way in agentic AI, and how these tools can change the way companies handle workflows. Below we outline the highlights and invite you to explore insights from the full series.

The big takeaways

Microsoft’s release of these 10 AI agents shows that business AI is evolving from theoretical to practical, but Microsoft’s other statements about agents have different implications:

1. Pre-built enterprise value: Microsoft’s agents are pre-configured to address specific workflows, unlike traditional toolkits that require a lot of customization. Whether it’s qualifying sales leads or optimizing supply chains, these agents are ready to deploy.
2. A decisive lead: By leveraging its ecosystem of productivity apps and customer reach, Microsoft is ahead of competitors like Salesforce, Google and AWS by offering enterprise-grade solutions at scale.
3. Redefining competition: The agents’ targeted capabilities, such as CRM lead scoring and time management, are challenging startups that previously dominated these niches.
4. The agentic AI vision: From off-the-shelf agents to fully custom solutions, Microsoft’s ecosystem enables enterprises to seamlessly create, customize and deploy agents, lowering the barrier to adoption.
5. LLM models may no longer be the most valuable: Microsoft’s shift from ‘per token’ to ‘per message’ pricing – and to ‘per outcome’ value – signals a move beyond the raw output of language models.

But with competitors like Google, AWS and open source frameworks nipping at their heels, Microsoft’s lead may not last forever. In the video series we also talk about these alternative players, and how Microsoft differentiates itself from them.

Watch the series

In this three-part series, we dive deep into what Microsoft’s AI agents mean for business leaders. Watch now to learn:

• Part 1: The four biggest takeaways from Microsoft Ignite 2024.
• Part 2: How Microsoft’s ten autonomous agents handle key business workflows (and in the process could kill a lot of startups that were launched to cover similar workflows).
• Part 3: How Microsoft stacks up against competitors like Google, OpenAI, and AWS in the race for agentic AI leadership.

Discover the full series here: