IBM and Microsoft announced Imagine Enterprise, a platform for building, running, and governing AI agents that carry out industry-specific business processes. IBM Consulting contributes more than 6,000 prebuilt AI agents and assets built on IBM Consulting Advantage, its AI-powered delivery platform, along with the experience of building and running them. Microsoft provides the AI, data, cloud, and security foundation, and forward-deployed engineers from both companies support qualifying engagements to move agents from experimentation into production.
Enterprise Integration and Governance
Imagine Enterprise connects agents to an organization’s existing data, processes, systems, and technology environment, so a customer can start from agents IBM has already built for its industry and adapt them without replacing the platforms it already runs. The companies are aiming the platform at regulated industries in particular, and it includes controls, observability, and AI compliance support for governing agents once they are in production, with security, identity, and AI governance built in.
On the Microsoft side, Microsoft Foundry, GitHub Copilot, and Microsoft Copilot Studio coordinate agents and enterprise systems, while Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365 infrastructure, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Azure provide the data, identity, AI governance, security, and cloud foundation. IBM Consulting Advantage contributes Process Studio, Context Studio, and Advantage Core, the tools IBM uses to design, deploy, and govern agents tailored to each client.
“Clients are no longer looking for AI that simply helps people do the same work a little faster. They want to build an agentic business,” said Mohamad Ali, Senior Vice President and Head of IBM Consulting. “Microsoft and IBM are helping organizations bring human expertise and digital labor together in a way that can scale across the enterprise, to turn AI from a productivity aid into a real competitive advantage.”
“Enterprise AI will be won by organizations that can turn their data, industry expertise, and AI into action,” said Rodrigo Kede Lima, President, Microsoft Frontier Company. “Together, Microsoft and IBM Consulting are bringing the best of our technology and expertise to help customers move from AI ambition to business impact faster and with confidence.”
Industry Frameworks and Availability
The first industry frameworks cover financial services, insurance, and retail, and IBM and Microsoft describe them as a repeatable blueprint for additional industries such as manufacturing, energy, the public sector, and mobility. SEI, a financial technology, operations, and asset management provider that manages, advises, or administers about $2 trillion in assets, is working with IBM Consulting and Microsoft to explore agentic technologies as part of its enterprise transformation.
Customers can engage IBM Consulting to deploy and operate Imagine Enterprise on their behalf or co-innovate with IBM Consulting on enterprise-scale implementations. Self-management options are also available for organizations that want to run the platform themselves.
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