Why AI Agent Adoption Needs a Framework: A Practical Introduction Using Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework

AI agents are rapidly becoming part of core business operations, supporting productivity, analytics, security, and customer engagement. As adoption accelerates, many organizations deploy AI agents faster than their governance, compliance, and operating models can mature. This often results in fragmented implementations, increased risk, and challenges when scaling AI across the enterprise.

This session explains why AI agent adoption requires a structured framework, and how Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) provides a clear, Microsoft-validated approach for adopting AI agents in a secure, compliant, and scalable way.

Designed as a beginner-friendly technical session, it starts with fundamentals. Attendees will gain a clear understanding of what AI agents are, how they differ from traditional AI workloads, and why they introduce new requirements for architecture, security, and lifecycle management. The session then introduces the AI Agent Adoption Guidance, a newly published addition to CAF, created based on real customer and partner adoption challenges.

The session walks through the four stages of AI agent adoption defined in the guidance:
• Plan for agents: Identify high-value use cases, select appropriate technologies, prepare teams, and ensure data readiness for scale and governance
• Govern and secure agents: Establish governance, security, and observability across the organization using consistent policies and controls
• Build agents: Apply standardized approaches for single-agent and multi-agent systems
• Manage agents: Integrate agents into operations, optimize costs, manage lifecycle, and measure adoption success

Best practices are mapped to Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Fabric, and Microsoft SaaS Copilot agents, demonstrating how Microsoft platforms support each adoption stage in practice.

A strong focus is placed on governance, security, and compliance, helping organizations reduce risk, meet enterprise and regulatory expectations, and prepare AI solutions for audit and scale. For Microsoft partners, the session explains how applying Cloud Adoption Framework guidance strengthens solution architecture and directly supports requirements associated with the Azure AI Advanced Competency

Speaker:

Artem Chernevskiy is a Cloud Adoption Framework Collaborator, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (AI Foundry), and an expert with hands-on experience in designing AI adoption processes and successfully passing Microsoft Azure AI Advanced Partner Competency audits. His perspective is grounded in real enterprise and partner delivery scenarios, helping audiences understand not only the guidance itself, but how to apply it effectively in compliant, production-ready environments.