From experimentation to production-scale AI

As we wrap up the Cloud & AI Platforms series, the focus shifts to where partners are investing next: building AI apps and agents that move beyond proof of concept into production at scale, with trust built in from day one.

The shift is clear: across industries, AI is reshaping how applications are designed, built, and delivered. We're witnessing a transition from point solutions to integrated systems, with Copilots and agents that can reason, act, and collaborate across workflows. This shift creates both urgency and opportunity for partners.

The enterprise AI adoption surge

The numbers tell a compelling story. According to IDC research, 68% of global enterprises surveyed are already using generative AI, with another 26% planning adoption in the next 12 months. Perhaps more importantly, organizations are rapidly moving from prebuilt generative AI apps toward customized or custom-built solutions—a shift projected from 40% today to 70% within 24 months.

This transition is exactly where Azure AI apps and agents come in, empowering customers to operationalize AI faster while keeping security, governance, and oversight at the forefront.

Putting developers at the center

AI innovation only moves as fast as developers do. Today, developers juggle multiple challenges: working across models, data, agents, infrastructure, and security often on fragmented toolchains. This complexity slows progress and pulls focus away from building differentiated experiences.

Microsoft Foundry and GitHub put developers at the center of AI innovation, extending AI across the full software development lifecycle. Developers can:

- Evaluate, build, and customize AI apps and agents
- Use familiar development tools and workflows
- Deploy solutions with governance and safety integrated
- Access a unified platform for design through operations

Microsoft Foundry IQ, now in preview, makes it possible to connect AI agents to the right data without unnecessary complexity. Built on Azure AI Search, it streamlines how agents discover, retrieve, and reason over both public and private sources—including SharePoint, Fabric IQ, and the web.

For partners, this creates a clear value proposition: helping customers increase development velocity while building AI-native applications designed to scale from day one.

Building trust into production AI systems

As AI becomes embedded in critical applications, priorities shift to security, governance, and responsible AI. Customers want innovation, but they also need confidence that AI solutions are safe, compliant, and aligned to business and regulatory expectations.

Microsoft Foundry expands safety and evaluation capabilities:

- AI Red Teaming Agent (public preview) for testing agentic systems before deployment
- Agentic evaluations that assess risk and quality
- Grounding through knowledge bases powered by Azure AI Search
- Citation-backed results to improve factual accuracy

Foundry Control Plane, announced at Microsoft Ignite 2025 and currently in preview, gives teams real-time security, lifecycle management, and visibility across agent platforms. It consolidates signals from Agent 365 and the Microsoft Security suite into a single interface.

From technology to business outcomes

What makes AI apps and agents powerful is not the technology alone—it's the outcomes they enable. Organizations use AI to:

- Reinvent customer engagement through personalized, conversational experiences
- Reshape business processes through knowledge automation and document workflows
- Enrich employee experiences with assistants that surface insights and reduce repetitive work
- Coordinate work across specialized tasks and long-running processes

Partners play a critical role in turning these scenarios into real deployments by aligning use cases to measurable outcomes, choosing the right patterns, and building the operating model that supports long-term success.

How partners can capitalize on this shift

This is a category-defining moment, and partners are positioned to lead. The market is moving past pilots toward production-grade AI, and customers need partners who connect technical depth to measurable business outcomes.

Successful partners master four high-value motions:

  1. Select and optimize the right models for each workload, balancing performance, cost, and compliance
  2. Design, build, and orchestrate agents that reliably take action across real business processes
  3. Ground development in trusted enterprise data using Foundry IQ knowledge bases
  4. Operationalize quality and safety as part of the delivery lifecycle
Microsoft Agent Factory removes barriers to innovation when building AI agents with the Microsoft AI stack. The Microsoft Agent Pre-Purchase Plan (P3) offers licensing flexibility with a single pool of funds for Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry services.

Getting started today

Partners ready to capitalize can:

- Explore how to build AI apps and agents with Microsoft Foundry and GitHub - Learn about Agentic DevOps and AI-powered development - Discover how Frontier Firms are unlocking business value of AI - Explore how Frontier Firms are transforming business

AI innovation is redefining how software is built, and partners are at the center of that change. Azure AI apps and agents provide the opportunity to help customers innovate faster, operate more efficiently, and build trust into the experiences they deliver.

Source: Microsoft Partner Blog