Introduction to challenges for frontier firms

  • 5 minutes

Frontier Transformation is a holistic reimagining of business, aligning AI with human ambition to achieve an organization’s highest aspirations. It's the next evolution of AI transformation delivering efficiency and productivity while democratizing intelligence for people. For more information, see Secure agentic AI for your Frontier Transformation.

Frontier firm is where humans and agents push the boundaries of innovation and create new possibilities. Organizations are rethinking their business processes and the way work gets done, driven by the results, and efficiencies made possible through AI. Organizations need AI that delivers real business outcomes and growth and not continued AI experimentation.

Frontier firms use AI to fundamentally transform operations and deliver measurable business impact. They combine human creativity with advanced AI such as Copilots. Beyond Copilots, frontier firms are rapidly adopting agents, which are specialized AI systems that can execute and manage complex business processes across the organization.

Currently, organizations are entering into a phase where agents are no longer experimental. Agents are rapidly becoming a foundational layer of how work gets done which includes

  • Being embedded in applications

  • Automating workflows

  • Collaborating with employees and with each other

  • Acting on behalf of the business

Optionally, you can sign up to Microsoft’s Frontier program to opt in to experimental and emerging AI features before they’re generally available. For more information, see  Frontier: Try what's next in AI

Organizational challenges with AI agents

The adoption of agents is accelerating. Organizations are expected to be running thousands or even millions of agents to support every aspect of their operations. The shift is already underway, with many companies seeing tangible value in terms of productivity and business outcomes from agents.

Analysts predict 1.3 billion agents by 2028 depending on how quickly organizations adopt AI agents to drive productivity, automate workflows, and unlock new value. This shift marks massive acceleration from isolated assistants to fleets of autonomous agents operating across the enterprise.

As agents become ubiquitous, organizations face growing challenges. The following diagram illustrates the growing needs around AI adoption, and the challenges organizations must address to fully leverage the potential of agents.

Diagram of AI adoption needs.

Leaders across organizations are asking how to address these challenges:

IT leaders want to understand how to address the following challenges:

Can IT track all agents in the organization and understand who is using the agents and how the agents are used and what agents are doing?

  • Are there guardrails and processes to control who can onboard and manage agents, and what those agents are allowed to do

  • Are agents behaving appropriately and sharing sensitive information securely?

  • Are agents well governed and audited and what are the costs?

Security leaders ask:

  • How do we onboard, manage, and govern these agents?

  • How do we protect the data they access and create?

  • How do we protect agents from cyberthreats?

  • How do we monitor agents for trustworthiness, and ensure they aren't double agents?

  • How can we use agents to protect, defend, and respond at the speed of AI?

Without this strong foundation, agent adoption can quickly lead to sprawl, unmanaged access, and operational risk. These issues threaten the productivity gains that agents promise.