Layer researchOperating model
Vendor landscape
As of 2026-08-19. Vendor capability claims are vendor-published unless third-party sourced. Re-verify quarterly.
- Vendor / product
- Microsoft Entra ID Governance (agent sponsors)
- Category
- Identity governance
- Maturity (Aug 2026)
- GA, licensed
- Notes
- Sponsor accountability with automatic transfer and access expiry; the productised form of named accountability [vendor]
- Vendor / product
- Workday Agent System of Record
- Category
- Workforce system for agents
- Maturity (Aug 2026)
- Announced Feb 2025, GA 2026
- Notes
- Agents managed alongside employees; the workforce framing in product form [vendor]
- Vendor / product
- Lattice AI employee records
- Category
- Workforce framing
- Maturity (Aug 2026)
- Announced and withdrawn July 2024
- Notes
- The cautionary case; three days from launch to reversal
- Vendor / product
- Microsoft Work Trend Index (human-agent ratio)
- Category
- Management framing
- Maturity (Aug 2026)
- 2025 and 2026 editions
- Notes
- Introduced the metric; published no numbers in either edition [vendor]
- Vendor / product
- Agent operations roles (job market)
- Category
- Emerging practice
- Maturity (Aug 2026)
- Postings exist
- Notes
- In practice site-reliability engineering renamed, with agent-specific metrics added
Agent-washing watch: supervision dashboards that report agent counts rather than queue behaviour; "AI manager" job titles whose actual content is unchanged; oversight claims whose only mechanism is an approval click.
Source: research/R13-operating-model/vendors.md in the evidence repository behind this site.