Microsoft

As of August 2026. Answers to the question bank where the research establishes them. Vendor-published facts flagged; product facts on the quarterly re-verification list.

What it is

The widest genuine footprint in the guide's coverage matrix. Four surfaces matter: Microsoft 365 Copilot (the horizontal assistant), Agent 365 (the governance plane, GA 1 May 2026, $15 per user per month standalone [vendor]), Entra Agent ID (agent identity, preview May 2025 [vendor]), and Azure AI Foundry plus Microsoft Agent Framework (the build and run surface; framework 1.0 GA April 2026, with the surface still moving through July 2026 [vendor]).

How it answers the bank

Identity (A). The strongest answers in the market. Agent identities became mandatory on the collaboration surfaces from July 2026 [vendor], the identity architecture encodes the access-versus-presence split directly, and the sponsor construct is productised in Entra ID Governance with automatic transfer and access expiry [vendor]. This is the product that made the guide's D019 revision necessary: the sponsor attribute exists at ID2 access identity, so ID3 presence is not required to obtain accountability.

Determinism (B). Deterministic information-flow control shipped in Agent Framework, with published results of zero policy-violating injections on a standard benchmark against 20 to 152 without it. That is a genuinely differentiated answer to B2.

Memory and exit (C, F). Purview handles evidence retention across the Microsoft estate [vendor]. The exit question is the weak one, as it is for every platform in this market: memory portability has no standard and no published migration.

Economics (D). Per-user rather than per-agent pricing on the governance plane. This is the answer to D5 that buyers most often miss: per-user licensing removed the cost brake that used to limit presence identity, so proliferation is now a governance problem rather than a budget one.

Coverage

Core at R08 productivity, R10 identity, R07 agent platform. Real at R01, R02 (Fabric), R03, R06, R11 (Purview), R12, R13 (sponsors). Adjacent at R04 outside Dynamics, R05, R14.

Watchouts

Agent 365's registry sync with other clouds was announced without coverage for the systems-of-record vendors' own agents [vendor]. If your estate runs Agentforce or Joule agents, confirm what the governance plane actually sees before treating it as one pane of glass.
Framework churn is the cost of buying in early: Agent Framework merged two predecessors and its surface was still moving a quarter after 1.0.
Paid attach for the horizontal assistant runs at roughly 4 to 6% of the installed base, and 66% of Copilot deployers run at least two other enterprise AI assistants (Gartner, June 2026). Gravity here shapes the shortlist, not the outcome.

Evidence status

Identity and governance claims are well documented and partly third-party corroborated. Adoption figures are vendor-derived through earnings coverage. The information-flow-control result is vendor-published against a public benchmark.

Sources

research/R08, R10, R07, R11, R12, R13 vendors.md and sources.md.

Source: vendors/profiles/microsoft.md in the evidence repository behind this site.