Best AI Control Planes for Microsoft Entra ID

The Microsoft MCP Gateway serves as an open-source reverse proxy and management interface for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, facilitating scalable and session-aware routing along with lifecycle management and centralized oversight of MCP services, particularly within Kubernetes setups. Acting as a control plane, it adeptly directs requests from AI agents (MCP clients) to the corresponding backend MCP servers while maintaining session affinity, effectively managing multiple tools and endpoints through a singular gateway that prioritizes authorization and observability. Additionally, it empowers teams to deploy, update, and remove MCP servers and tools through RESTful APIs, enabling the registration of tool definitions and the management of these resources with security measures such as bearer tokens and role-based access control (RBAC). The architecture distinctly separates the management of the control plane, which includes CRUD operations on adapters, tools, and metadata, from the data plane's routing capabilities, which support streamable HTTP connections and dynamic tool routing, thus providing advanced features like session-aware stateful routing. This design not only enhances operational efficiency but also fosters a more secure environment for managing AI services.

Agent 365 is Microsoft’s new enterprise framework for managing AI agents with the same rigor and structure used for human users. It centralizes oversight by providing a registry that surfaces every agent operating within your organization, including identity-secured agents, internally registered agents, and automatically detected shadow agents. The platform enhances security by extending Microsoft Defender protections, Entra identity access controls, and Purview governance policies to all agents. Agent 365 integrates with Microsoft 365, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, enabling agents to participate in workflows, analytics, and productivity tasks just like any other digital worker. Using Work IQ, organizations can equip agents with deep contextual understanding sourced from company data, relationships, and internal systems. This unified approach simplifies deployment, strengthens compliance, and improves operational insight for IT teams. Through Microsoft’s Frontier early access program, IT admins can explore and activate Agent 365 directly in the Admin Center. Microsoft built Agent 365 to support the rapidly growing role of AI agents across enterprise environments, ensuring they remain secure, governed, and aligned with organizational standards.