Collaborating with Microsoft to Bring Connectivity, Context, and Control to AI Agents

Today, I'm excited to share that Microsoft announced our collaboration to bring CData's managed MCP platform, Connect AI, natively into Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, and their newly announced Agent 365 platform on the first day of Microsoft Ignite 2025. This partnership addresses the three critical requirements for successful enterprise AI agents: Connectivity, Context, and Control.

Without these three pillars working together, AI agents remain isolated and ineffective. They can't access the data they need (connectivity), don't understand the meaning of that data (context), or lack the security frameworks required for enterprise deployment (control). By bringing Connect AI's proven capabilities natively into Microsoft's agent ecosystem, we're making it possible to deploy agents that can think, reason, and act — safely and intelligently.

Why Microsoft chose Connect AI: The three pillars of enterprise AI success

Microsoft chose to feature CData for MCP connectivity alongside their Agent 365 launch because of our enterprise-proven data infrastructure. Battle-tested over 10 years, we now power some of the most demanding AI deployments from market leaders like Google Cloud, Salesforce Data Cloud, and Palantir.

Connect AI delivers on all three of the critical pillars to make AI agents successful:

• Connectivity: One MCP platform with 350+ pre-built, maintained connectors gives agents access to every capability in each API through an efficient toolset that eliminates tool sprawl and optimizes token usage.

• Context: Our semantic-rich data model teaches agents how source systems work — their schemas, metadata, entity relationships and business logic — enabling cleaner reasoning without context overload.

• Control: Identity-first security ensures source system permissions flow through OAuth/SSO, while adding AI-specific role-based access controls, least-privilege permissions and comprehensive audit trails.

Together, these pillars are already enabling companies and software providers to transform AI agents from impressive demos into production-ready systems that can think and act across your entire enterprise.

Read how CData helps power the Agent 365 ecosystem in Microsoft's blog: From Innovation to Enterprise Trust with Microsoft Agent 365

How Connect AI enhances Microsoft's AI capabilities

For organization’s using Microsoft's AI ecosystem, Connect AI enhances AI agents:

In Copilot Studio, your agents gain instant access to 350+ enterprise systems beyond the Microsoft ecosystem through a managed MCP connection — bringing real-time connectivity to SAP, Salesforce (with custom objects), Oracle, ServiceNow, Snowflake, legacy databases, and hundreds more systems that power your business. Your existing topics become smarter as they inherit semantic understanding of how each system works, while your established governance model extends seamlessly across all these new connections.

With Azure AI Foundry, both enterprise developers and software providers can build sophisticated AI applications that reason across entire data landscapes:

• For enterprise IT teams: Our efficient toolset enables your internal AI applications to conduct complex multi-source analysis across your organization's data.

• For software providers: Connect AI becomes your universal connectivity layer, allowing your agents to gain instant access to a customer’s enterprise systems without building and maintaining individual bespoke integrations.

Both benefit from faster development cycles and more accurate AI outputs — all built on a neutral data infrastructure layer that gives you freedom to innovate with future AI advancements.

Through Agent 365, organizations gain the perfect AI governance complement — Agent 365 governs what agents can do, while Connect AI provides controlled access to the source-system tools and data agents need. With Connect AI's identity-first security model, RBAC permissions are inherited from the source, while also adding AI-specific data controls. Every data access is logged, every permission is enforced, and your security team maintains complete oversight through Agent 365's governance framework.

Bridging the gap between AI promise and performance

This collaboration marks a critical threshold for enterprise AI. By bringing Connect AI natively into Microsoft's ecosystem, we're finally giving enterprises the three essential ingredients: comprehensive connectivity to all business systems, semantic understanding of how those systems work together, and enterprise-grade security that IT can trust.

When agents can access every system, understand every data relationship, and operate within proven security frameworks, they transform from experiments into essential business tools — answering complex cross-system questions, automating workflows, and delivering insights at scale. The enterprises that win with AI will be those that give their agents the deepest, most accurate understanding of their business.

Enterprises: Try connecting data to Microsoft AI agents yourself with a 14-day free trial of Connect AI, or learn more about how Connect AI integrates with Microsoft AI offerings.

Software Providers: Book a demo today to learn more about CData’s embedded capabilities for AI connectivity.