IBM and Microsoft have announced a new agentic AI platform designed to help enterprises build, deploy, and govern AI agents across industry-specific business processes, as organisations look to move beyond AI experimentation and towards production deployments.
Called Imagine Enterprise, the platform combines IBM Consulting’s portfolio of more than 6,000 prebuilt AI agents and assets with Microsoft’s AI, data, cloud, and security technologies. The companies are also providing forward-deployed engineering support to help businesses move from experimentation to production.
“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.
The platform is designed to help enterprises connect AI agents with their existing data, processes, systems, and technology environments without replacing the infrastructure they already depend on. It also includes controls, observability, and AI compliance support, alongside enterprise security, identity management, and governance capabilities.
IBM is contributing more than 6,000 AI agents and assets developed through IBM Consulting Advantage, its AI-powered delivery platform. Microsoft is providing the underlying technology through Microsoft Foundry, GitHub Copilot, and Microsoft Copilot Studio, which help coordinate AI agents and enterprise systems.
The broader technology foundation includes Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365 infrastructure, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Azure. IBM Consulting Advantage also brings Process Studio, Context Studio, and Advantage Core to help organisations design, deploy, and govern customised agents.
The initial industry-specific frameworks will cover financial services, insurance, and retail. The companies said these frameworks are designed to establish a repeatable blueprint for potential expansion into manufacturing, energy, the public sector, and mobility.
SEI, a global provider of financial technology, operations and asset management services, is exploring emerging and agentic technologies with IBM Consulting, with support from Microsoft, as part of its enterprise transformation. The company is looking to improve its operations and enhance the experiences it delivers to employees and clients.
“Our work with IBM Consulting and Microsoft is helping us explore how emerging capabilities could support critical processes and be responsibly scaled over time,” said Sneha Shah, Chief AI Strategist and Head of SEI Next.
