Models are limited to their own knowledge and reasoning capabilities—they can’t access real-time data or perform actions on their own. Tools are what make agents truly powerful. By connecting agents to live information, enabling automation, and integrating with the apps and services you use every day, tools transform agents from passive responders into active problem-solvers. With tools, agents can deliver faster, smarter, and more connected experiences that drive real results.

Microsoft Foundry is now your central hub for discovering, testing, and integrating powerful AI tools—designed to accelerate every stage of your development journey. Whether you’re prototyping new ideas, optimizing production workflows, or extending the capabilities of your AI solutions, Microsoft Foundry puts everything you need at your fingertips.

We are excited to announce the following capabilities to empower your experience of building agents with tools:

• Discover from Foundry Tools(preview): Browse a growing, curated, enterprise-ready list of 1400+ Microsoft and partner-provided tools, covering industries from databases, developer tools, analytics and more.
• Build your organization’s tool catalog (preview): Build and manage a tools catalog for your own enterprise with your private and custom tools.
• Enhanced Enterprise Support
  • Connect MCP servers and A2A endpoints with comprehensive authentication support, via OAuth identity passthrough, Microsoft Entra Agent Identity, Microsoft Entra Managed Identity and more
  • Govern your tools via AI Gateway (preview) with customizable policies
  • Leverage Azure Policy to enforce security behaviors
• Bring A2A endpoint to Foundry Agent Service(preview): via A2A tool, you can easily bring A2A endpoint to Foundry Agent Service with comprehensive authentication support

Foundry Tools (preview) 

Building AI agents isn’t just about intelligence—it’s about action. To deliver real business value, agents need to connect with the systems where work happens, access enterprise data securely, and orchestrate workflows across tools your teams already use. That’s where Foundry Tools in Microsoft Foundry come in.

With 1400+ officially curated tools from Microsoft and trusted partners, the Foundry Tools give developers and enterprises everything they need to build agents that are powerful, integrated, and ready for scale.

"Celonis and Microsoft are creating the tech stack for the AI-driven, composable enterprise. By bringing the Celonis MCP Server into the Foundry Tool Catalog, we’re enabling organizations to infuse real-time process intelligence directly into their AI workflows. This integration empowers AI agents to understand business processes in context and take intelligent action through scalable, process-aware automation. Together we’re helping customers transform and continuously improve operations, delivering meaningful ROI." 

— Dan Brown, Chief Product Officer, Celonis 

“Integrating Sophos Intelix with Foundry brings threat intelligence directly into the heart of security workflows. By embedding real-time file, URL, and IP reputation insights into AI agents built in Foundry, we’re enabling analysts to make faster, smarter decisions without leaving their existing tools. This collaboration with Microsoft transforms incident response by combining domain-specific cybersecurity expertise with the power of AI, helping security teams stay ahead of evolving threats.” 

— Simon Reed, Chief Research and Scientific Officer, Sophos 

"As AI agents reshape enterprise workflows, organizations increasingly need to connect data across multiple platforms that have historically operated in isolation,” said Ben Kus, Chief Technology Officer at Box. “By integrating with Microsoft Foundry, Box is deepening its partnership with Microsoft to enable developers to build sophisticated agents on Azure that can intelligently leverage customers’ enterprise content in Box. Instead of relying on complex, one-off integrations to access proprietary data, the Box MCP Server provides a standardized bridge, empowering the use of interoperable agents while maintaining Box’s enterprise-grade security and permissions.” 

We are excited to bring tools in different categories in Foundry Tools:

Databases: Fuel Intelligent Decisions 

Agents thrive on data. With tools connecting to data in Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Databricks Genie, Azure Managed Redis, Azure Databases for PostgreSQL, Azure SQL, Elastic, MongoDB, and Pinecone, your agents can query, analyze, and act on your own data —powering smarter decisions and automated insights. All through natural language, without compromising enterprise security or compliance.   

Agent 365 MCP Servers: Where Work Happens 

Starting at Ignite this year, we are excited to bring Agent 365 MCP servers to select Frontier customers. Agent 365 MCP servers are the backbone of enterprise-grade agentic automation, seamlessly connecting Outlook Calendar, Outlook Email, SharePoint, Teams, and a growing suite of productivity and collaboration tools to digital worker agents built in Foundry and other leading platforms. With the Agent 365 Tooling Gateway, agent builders gain secure, scalable access to certified MCP servers—each designed to unlock rich, governed interactions with core business data while enforcing IT policies and compliance at every step. Whether orchestrating meetings, managing documents, or collaborating across channels, agents leverage these servers to deliver intelligent workflows with built-in observability, audit trails, and granular policy enforcement. This unified approach fulfills the Agent 365 promise: empowering organizations to innovate confidently, knowing every agent action is traceable, compliant, and ready to scale across the enterprise. 

Developer Tools: Build Faster, Deploy Smarter 

Accelerate your agent development lifecycle with tools like GitHub, Vercel, and Postman. From version control to API testing and front-end deployment, these integrations help you ship high-quality experiences faster. 

Custom tools from Azure Logic Apps Connectors: Automate at Scale 

Agents often need to orchestrate multi-step workflows across diverse systems. With hundreds of Azure Logic Apps connectors, you can automate approvals, sync data, and integrate SaaS apps without writing custom code. 

Build your organization tool catalog (preview) 

In large enterprises, the teams that build APIs and tools are often separate from those that consume them to create AI agents, leading to friction, delays, and governance challenges. The private tool catalog, powered by Azure API Center, solves this by providing a single, secure hub where internal tools are published, discovered, and managed with confidence.

Key features include:

• Centralized publishing with metadata, authentication profiles, and version control.
• Easy discovery for agent developers, reducing integration time from weeks to minutes.

With this organizational catalog, enterprises can turn internal capabilities into enterprise-ready AI solutions, accelerating innovation while maintaining control. 

Enhanced Enterprise Support for Tools 

As enterprises build AI agents that connect to a growing universe of APIs and agent endpoints, robust authentication and governance are non-negotiable. Microsoft Foundry delivers comprehensive support for tools and protocols, such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), A2A, and OpenAPI, ensuring every integration meets your organization’s security and compliance standards. 

Flexible Authentication for Every Enterprise Scenario 

Foundry supports a full spectrum of authentication methods for MCP servers and A2A endpoints—including key-based, Microsoft Entra Agent Identity, Microsoft Entra Foundry Project Managed Identity, and OAuth Identity Passthrough. This flexibility means you can choose shared authentication for organization-wide access, or individual authentication to persist user context and enforce least-privilege access. For example, OAuth Identity Passthrough allows users to sign into the MCP server and grant the agent access to their credentials, while Microsoft Entra Agentic Identity and Managed Identity enable seamless, secure service-to-service connections. 

AI Gateway: Governance and Policy Enforcement (preview) 

For advanced governance, Foundry integrates with the AI Gateway powered by Azure API Management (APIM). Once an AI Gateway is integrated with the Foundry resource, all eligible MCP servers will automatically be governed by the AI Gateway with admin-configured custom policies. This ensures that every tool invocation adheres to enterprise-grade governance—without requiring any manual configuration from developers. When enabled, admins can govern tool traffic to be routed through the AI Gateway, where enterprise policies are enforced at runtime.

AI Gateway enforces powerful enterprise controls at runtime, including:

• Authentication and Authorization: Enforce OAuth, subscription key, or IP-based authentication, with token validation and RBAC controls. 

• Traffic Management: Apply quotas, rate limits, and throttling to control usage and prevent abuse. 

• Security and Compliance: Add data loss prevention, request/response validation, and custom policies for sensitive workloads. 

• Observability: Capture unified telemetry for every tool invocation, with integrated logging and metrics through Azure Monitor and Foundry analytics. 
• Policy Management: Admins can manage and update policies in the Azure API Management portal.  

A2A tool in Foundry Agent Service (preview) 

The Foundry Agent Service introduces a powerful pattern: you can add an A2A compatible agent to your Foundry agents simply by adding it via A2A tool. With A2A tools, your Foundry agent can securely invoke another A2A compatible agent’s capabilities—enabling modular, reusable workflows across teams and business units. This approach leverages comprehensive authentication options, including OAuth passthrough, Microsoft Entra to ensure every agent call is authorized, auditable, and governed by enterprise policy.  

Connecting agents via A2ATool VS Multi-agent Workflow 

• Via A2A Tool: When Agent A calls Agent B via a tool, Agent B's answer is passed back to Agent A, which then summarizes the answer and generates a response to the user. Agent A retains control and continues to handle future user input. 

• Via Workflow: When Agent A calls Agent B via Workflow or other multi-agent orchestration, the responsibility of answering the user is completely transferred to Agent B. Agent A is effectively out of the loop. All subsequent user input will be answered by Agent B.  

Get started today 

Start building with tools for intelligent agents today with Microsoft Foundry.

If you’re attending Microsoft Ignite 2025, or watching on-demand content later, be sure to check out these sessions:

• Innovation Session: Build & Manage AI Apps with Your Agent Factory
• AI agents in Microsoft Foundry, ship fast, scale fearlessly
• AI powered automation & multi-agent orchestration in Microsoft Foundry
• AI builder’s guide to agent development in Foundry Agent Service

To learn more, visit Microsoft Learn and explore resources including the AI Agents for Beginners, Microsoft Agent Framework, and course materials that help you build and operate agents responsibly.