Igniting what’s next: What software development companies need to know about Microsoft’s AI announcements at Ignite 2025
The AI landscape took a major leap forward at Microsoft Ignite 2025, and for software development companies and digital natives, the announcements represent a massive opportunity: faster innovation, simplified agent development, access to enterprise‑ready AI platforms, and a dramatically expanded ecosystem to build on.
This year, Microsoft introduced the era of agentic AI—and software companies are at the center of this shift.
Ignite 2025 formally unveiled Microsoft Foundry, our unified platform for building, governing, and scaling intelligent agents. From new agent runtimes to multi‑agent orchestration, enterprise‑grade knowledge access, and one‑click publishing to Microsoft 365, the momentum creates one clear signal:
💡 AI assistants are becoming intelligent agents—and Foundry is the platform software companies will use to build them.
Why Microsoft Ignite 2025 mattered for software companies
Across every session, Microsoft doubled down on helping partners accelerate time‑to‑market with agentic AI solutions. Whether you’re building vertical apps, automation copilots, knowledge systems, or developer tools, the new capabilities in Foundry eliminate much of the heavy lifting associated with retrieval, orchestration, compliance, hosting, and model selection.
Key themes this year from Azure AI:
- Unified agent platform across all Microsoft clouds
- Framework‑agnostic development (bring your own models, tools, or frameworks)
- Enterprise‑grade governance built into the lifecycle
- Open ecosystem and interoperability using MCP, A2A, OpenAPI
- Seamless distribution through Microsoft 365 and Teams
Let’s break down what’s new—and what it means for your product strategy.
Top announcements for software companies at Ignite 2025
Microsoft Foundry: A unified brand for AI agent development
Azure AI Foundry is now Microsoft Foundry—a consolidated platform for building, deploying, and managing intelligent agents.
For software companies, this means:
- One consistent developer experience
- Shared governance and compliance across products
- A more integrated ecosystem for publishing and distributing agentic solutions
This rebrand isn’t cosmetic—it reflects Microsoft’s strategic shift to deliver a platform built explicitly for the next generation of AI agents.
Introducing Foundry IQ: Your enterprise knowledge engine
One of the most exciting announcements is Foundry IQ, a new engine that gives agents instant access to enterprise data from SharePoint, OneLake, ADLS, and the web, all governed by Purview.
For software companies, this unlocks:
- Reliable, production‑grade knowledge retrieval without building RAG pipelines
- Consistent compliance and security models
- Faster customer onboarding with fewer integration gaps
Foundry IQ is a game‑changer for teams who have spent months building retrieval layers or maintaining custom RAG components.
Foundry Control Plane: Unified governance for all agents
Now in public preview, the Foundry Control Plane enables teams to manage agents across frameworks, clouds, and environments.
Highlights:
- Unified visibility and observability
- Built‑in security & compliance (Defender, Purview)
- Fleet‑wide monitoring for cost, health, and risk
For software companies offering multi‑tenant solutions or operating in regulated industries, this dramatically simplifies the operational burden of managing AI agents.
Agent Framework (public preview): SK + AutoGen, Unified
The Microsoft Agent Framework, now in public preview, merges the strengths of Semantic Kernel and AutoGen into a single SDK for building durable, interoperable agents.
Software companies gain:
- A consistent programming model
- Durable memory
- Strong interoperability with MCP, A2A, OpenAPI
- Framework‑agnostic design
This is the developer foundation for future AI applications built on Microsoft clouds.
Hosted Agents: Enterprise‑grade runtime, no infrastructure needed
With Hosted Agents, teams can deploy custom‑code agents directly into a fully managed runtime—no containers, pipelines, or infra setup.
What this enables for software companies:
- Faster deployment cycles
- Secure, autoscaling environments
- Simple onboarding for customer‑specific agents
- Observability and monitoring built in
This drastically reduces the operational overhead many software companies face today.
Multi‑agent workflows & connected intelligence
Ignite 2025 introduced major advancements in multi‑agent orchestration:
- Built‑in memory across sessions
- A catalog of 1,000+ Microsoft & partner tools (with private catalogs for software companies)
- Visual and programmatic orchestration tools
- Enterprise‑ready coordination for long‑running workflows
- Foundry IQ for instant knowledge access
This allows software companies to design more autonomous, intelligent, and interconnected systems—moving beyond assistants toward true digital workers.
Model Router GA + Anthropic partnership expansion
There are two major updates for model flexibility:
Model Router GA
Now supporting 11,000+ models, the router helps developers intelligently choose the best model for each task, optimizing both cost and performance.
Anthropic Claude models in Foundry
Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.1, and Haiku 4.5 are now integrated into Microsoft Foundry through an expanded partnership with Anthropic.
This gives software companies more choice, capability, and model‑agnostic development paths.
One‑click publishing to Microsoft 365 & Teams
One of the biggest wins for software companies: Agents built in Foundry can now be published to Microsoft 365 and Teams Chat with one click.
This means:
- Access to hundreds of millions of users
- Unified governance through Microsoft Admin Center
- Seamless integration with Copilot experiences
For software companies, this is a massive new distribution channel.
Why this matters for software development companies
Ignite 2025 didn’t just introduce new products—it signaled a platform shift.
software companies now have:
- A full-stack platform for agentic applications - From data access to orchestration, hosting, deployment, and compliance.
- A unified runtime and SDK - Reducing fragmentation and speeding up development cycles.
- Enterprise reach through Microsoft 365 - Making your agents as discoverable as apps.
- A rapidly expanding ecosystem - More models, more tools, more integration points.
If you’re building AI-powered products, this is your moment.
Get hands-on: Sessions & resources for software companies
Here are links to top Ignite sessions to dive deeper.
- Build & Manage AI Apps with Your Agent Factory
- AI Agents in Azure AI Foundry: Ship Fast, Scale Fearlessly
- AI‑Powered Automation & Multi‑Agent Orchestration
- Agent Developer Guide for Foundry Agent Service
- The Future of RAG with Agentic Retrieval & AI Search
What’s next: December Foundry Council Session
Join us on Dec 18 for the Ignite Recap session through the Foundry Partner Council. It’s the best opportunity for software companies to:
- Get deeper into the new capabilities
- Share partner/DN feedback
- Join focus groups
For more information about the December 18 session, contact foundrycouncil@microsoft.com or visit aka.ms/foundrycouncil
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