IBM and Microsoft Launch Imagine Enterprise, a Platform for Industry AI Agents

IBM and Microsoft announced Imagine Enterprise on Tuesday, November 10, a jointly offered platform for building, running and governing AI agents that carry out industry-specific business processes. The two companies are pairing more than 6,000 prebuilt agents and assets from IBM Consulting with Microsoft's AI, data, identity and security stack, and they are starting with financial services, insurance and retail. For enterprise data and AI leaders, the launch is a clear example of a trend that has been building all year: large vendors are packaging agents with consulting delivery and governance, rather than selling models or tools alone.

What is Imagine Enterprise?

IBM describes Imagine Enterprise as "an agentic platform designed to help enterprises build, run, and govern AI agents" that help people carry out industry processes, according to the joint announcement on IBM's newsroom. The agent content comes from IBM Consulting Advantage, which IBM calls its AI-powered delivery platform, and includes what the release describes as a fleet of more than 6,000 AI agents and assets.

The companies frame the offer around three ideas. "Instant expertise" refers to the prebuilt agents, "fits the enterprise" to adapting them to a client's existing data and systems, and "intelligence multiplier" to connecting enterprise knowledge and context so agents can act on it. Both companies will also supply forward-deployed engineers for qualifying engagements, the release said, an approach that CIO Dive noted Microsoft, IBM, Google and AWS have all adopted to get agent projects into production.

Which technologies does it run on?

The platform leans heavily on Microsoft's stack. According to the IBM release, Microsoft Foundry, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio coordinate agents and connect them to enterprise systems, while Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft 365, Entra, Purview, Defender and Azure provide the data, identity, governance, security and cloud layers. On the IBM side, three components of IBM Consulting Advantage, called Process Studio, Context Studio and Advantage Core, are used to design, deploy and govern agents.

Unite.AI reported that Microsoft Sentinel provides real-time visibility into agents in production, a detail not included in the IBM release. Notably, the announcement does not position IBM's own watsonx models or tooling as part of the platform, which makes Imagine Enterprise as much a Microsoft cloud offering delivered by IBM Consulting as a joint product.

How does it handle governance and control?

Governance is central to the pitch. The IBM release promises controls, observability and AI compliance support, along with security, identity and governance "built into the experience." Unite.AI, citing IBM, described the mechanics in more detail: every agent action, decision and escalation is logged, with real-time data on latency, cost, token usage and run history. Administrators decide which actions an agent may take on its own, which require human approval and when escalation is mandatory, and agents cannot exceed those limits. An operational layer monitors performance and recommends changes, and approved changes are redeployed automatically.

Those controls line up with the questions that risk and compliance teams now ask before any agent touches a production process. Logging every decision, tying agents to Entra identities and tracking cost per run are the same basics that enterprises have been trying to assemble themselves from separate tools. The test will be whether those controls work consistently across thousands of prebuilt agents built by different teams.

Which industries come first, and who is using it?

The first industry frameworks cover financial services, insurance and retail, and IBM said they are meant to "establish a repeatable blueprint" for later industries such as manufacturing, energy, the public sector and mobility. Unite.AI described an insurance example in which a claims agent triages incoming claims, flags fraud signals and routes cases to human adjusters.

The only named client is SEI, the financial services technology company. Sneha Shah, SEI's chief AI strategist, said in the release that the work is helping the firm explore how new capabilities could support critical processes. Unite.AI noted that SEI's involvement is exploratory and that no production results were disclosed.

How can enterprises buy it?

Imagine Enterprise is available by engaging IBM Consulting to deploy and run the platform on a client's behalf, or by co-developing larger implementations with IBM Consulting, according to the release. Self-managed options are also available. Neither company disclosed pricing or a general availability date. Mohamad Ali, head of IBM Consulting, said clients "want to build an agentic business," while Rodrigo Kede Lima, president of Microsoft Frontier Company, said enterprise AI will be won by organizations that can turn data, industry expertise and AI into action.

What does it mean for enterprise data and AI leaders?

The launch reflects a shift in how agents are sold. Instead of buying a model and building every workflow internally, enterprises are being offered libraries of prebuilt, industry-specific agents that run on a cloud they already use and come with consultants to fit them to local processes. That can shorten time to value, particularly for organizations already standardized on Microsoft 365, Fabric and Entra.

It also raises familiar questions. A services-led platform ties agent operations to a consulting relationship, so leaders should clarify who owns the agents, the process designs and the logs once an engagement ends. They should also check how well prebuilt agents fit their own data models, since the platform's value depends on connecting to existing systems. CIO Dive cited a Gartner finding that only 4% of CIOs have put plans in place to adjust roles for a workforce that mixes people and agents, a reminder that the operating model, not the technology, is often the slower part of the work.

Frequently asked questions

What is Imagine Enterprise?

An agentic platform from IBM and Microsoft, announced November 10, 2026, for building, running and governing AI agents that carry out industry-specific processes.

Which industries does Imagine Enterprise support first?

Financial services, insurance and retail, with manufacturing, energy, public sector and mobility named as possible later additions.

How can companies buy Imagine Enterprise?

By engaging IBM Consulting to deploy and run it, by co-developing implementations with IBM Consulting, or through self-managed options. Pricing was not disclosed.

Filed under: Agentic AI, AI Governance & Trust, AI Strategy & ROI