The past year has seen AI agents rapidly evolve from simple prompt-response bots to autonomous, collaborative digital workers embedded in enterprise systems. No longer confined to static interfaces or single applications, these agents are now reshaping software design and business workflows across industries.

Microsoft has been at the forefront of this transformation. Today, over 70,000 enterprises and digital-native companies, including Atomicwork, Epic, Fujitsu, Gainsight, H&R Block, and LG Electronics, use Azure AI Foundry to design, customize, and manage AI apps and agents. In just four months, more than 10,000 organizations have adopted Microsoft’s new Agent Service for building, deploying, and scaling agentic systems, while over 230,000 organizations (including 90% of the Fortune 500) have leveraged Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Embracing Openness: The Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol

As AI agents take on more sophisticated roles, the need for seamless collaboration between agents across clouds, platforms, and organizational boundaries has become critical. To address this, Microsoft has announced support for Google’s open Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, a new industry standard for agent-to-agent interoperability.

A2A enables agents to communicate, exchange goals, manage state, invoke actions, and return results securely and observably. This structured communication is vital for orchestrating complex, multi-agent workflows that cross vendor, cloud, and data silos, empowering both professional and citizen developers to build interoperable agentic systems.

Building a Collaborative, Open Agent Ecosystem

Microsoft’s adoption of A2A is part of a broader industry push for open, shared protocols. By joining the A2A working group on GitHub and integrating the protocol into Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, Microsoft is helping to lay the foundation for a new generation of collaborative, observable, and adaptive software.

With A2A support

• Azure AI Foundry customers can build multi-agent workflows that span internal copilots, partner tools, and production infrastructure-while maintaining governance and SLAs.
• Copilot Studio agents will be able to securely invoke external agents, including those built with other platforms or hosted outside Microsoft.
• Enterprises gain a path to composable, intelligent systems that scale across organizational and cloud boundaries.

A2A is designed with enterprise-grade safeguards, including Microsoft Entra, mutual TLS, Azure AI Content Safety, and full audit logs. This ensures that as agent ecosystems become more open and distributed, safety, compliance, and accountability remain first-class priorities.

Strategic Partnerships Fueling AI Agent Adoption

Microsoft’s collaboration with Kore.ai further illustrates the momentum behind agentic automation. By integrating Kore.ai’s virtual agents natively across Microsoft Copilot, Teams, and Azure OpenAI, enterprises can unify AI-driven collaboration, productivity, and automation within their existing Microsoft environments. This partnership accelerates the deployment of AI-powered services and supports a seamless, integrated agent ecosystem.

What’s Next: The Agentic Economy Takes Shape

Microsoft sees protocols like A2A and Model Context Protocol (MCP) as critical steps toward an “agentic future”-where intelligent agents reason, act, and adapt across boundaries, orchestrating tasks that span vendors, clouds, and data silos. The company has already published .NET and Python samples in Semantic Kernel, demonstrating how agents can collaborate over A2A, such as scheduling meetings and drafting emails with zero custom code.

A public preview of A2A in Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio is coming soon, with Microsoft committed to ongoing contributions to the protocol and tooling via the A2A working group.

Conclusion

As AI agents become foundational to enterprise operations, interoperability is no longer optional; it is essential. Microsoft’s support for the open A2A protocol, in partnership with Google and others, marks a major milestone for the AI ecosystem. The next generation of software will be defined not just by smarter models, but by how agents interact across services, platforms, and organizations-unlocking new levels of automation, efficiency, and business value