Microsoft Leaves Gaps in Technologies for ISVs to Fill – Like Agent Governance

Every time Microsoft makes a big move, ISVs seek to take advantage with a new product. It’s the way of the work. Microsoft creates technology and ISVs fill the holes left in that technology. In some respects, the cloud is a difficult place for ISVs. There’s less to tweak than in an on-premises environment and although the Graph APIs have extended their coverage to more areas of Microsoft 365 over the last few years, significant gaps still exist for major workloads like Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

But a new technology creates a new opportunity because everything starts from scratch. Microsoft’s big move into artificial intelligence with Copilot hasn’t created too many opportunities because Copilot depends on a massive infrastructure operated by Microsoft that’s inaccessible except through applications like BizChat. Agents are different. They’re objects that need to be managed. They consume resources that need to be paid for. They represent potential security and compliance problems that require mitigation. In short, agents represent a chance for ISVs to build products to solve customer problems as Microsoft heads full tilt to its agentic future.

Building an Infrastructure for Agent Governance

To be fair to Microsoft, they’ve started to build an infrastructure for agent management. Apart from a whitepaper about managing and governning agents, the first concrete sign is the introduction of agent objects in Entra ID. Microsoft is thinking about how agents can work together, and how that communication can be controlled and monitored. That’s all great stuff and it will deliver benefits in the future, but the immediate risk is the fear that agents might run amok inside Microsoft 365 tenants.

Microsoft reports that there are 56 million monthly active users of Power Platform, or 13% of the 430 million paid Microsoft 365 seats. That’s a lot of citizen developers who could create agents using tools like Copilot Studio. Unless tenant administrators disable ad-hoc email subscriptions for the tenant, developers could be building agents without anyone’s knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong. I see great advantages in agent technology and have even built agents myself, notably a very useful agent to interact with the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. One thing that we’ve learned over the last 30 years is that when users are allowed to create, they will. And they’ll create objects without thought, and those objects will need to be cleaned up eventually, or, as Microsoft discovered, the mass of SharePoint Online sites created for Teams became a real problem for Microsoft 365 Copilot deployments. Incorporating solid management and governance from the start is of great benefit for new technologies.

Rencore Steps Up with Copilot Agent Governance

All of which brings me to Rencore’s announcement of two new modules for their governance product to deal with Copilot and agent governance and Power Platform governance (Figure 1). Matthias Einig, Rencore’s CEO, has been forceful about the need to take control of these areas and it’s good to see that he’s investing in product development to help Microsoft 365 tenants take control before agents get any chance to become a problem.

I have not used the Rencore product and do not endorse it. I just think that it’s great to see an ISV move into this area with purpose and intent. It seems like Rencore aims to address some major pain points, like shadow IT, the cost of running Copilot agents, over-sharing, and “agent sprawl.” All good stuff.

I’m sure other ISVs will enter this space (and there might be some active in the area already that I don’t know of). This will be an interesting area to track as ISVs seek new ways to mitigate the potential risks posed by agents.

No Time to Relax

Product from one ISV does not mean that we can all relax and conclude that agent management is done. It’s not. The continuing huge investment by Microsoft in this space means that agent capabilities will improve and grow over time. Each improvement and new feature has the potential to affect governance and compliance strategies. Don’t let your guard down and make sure that your tenant has agents under control. And keep them that way.

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