Microsoft’s Ignite 2025 conference was packed with big announcements, especially around AI, Copilot agents, security, and the Power Platform. Here are some of the most important takeaways and what they mean for businesses.

Copilot and Agent Innovation Takes Centre Stage 

A major theme at Ignite was Microsoft’s vision of an “agentic” future, combining human-led work with AI agents. The newly introduced Agent 365 gives organisations a central way to manage and govern AI agents across Microsoft 365. To make Copilot smarter and more personal, Microsoft also announced Work IQ, an intelligence layer that connects to users’ documents, emails, and meetings to build memory and provide more context-aware assistance. 

In a big win for conversational AI, voice in Microsoft 365 Copilot is now generally available for commercial customers letting users talk to Copilot and switch seamlessly between voice and text.

Smarter SharePoint with AI Agents

SharePoint is getting a serious AI boost. The Knowledge Agent, now in public preview, helps surface and auto-tag content using organisational knowledge. 

Even more powerful: users in Microsoft 365 Copilot’s Frontier programme can now create SharePoint pages and lists directly from Copilot Chat using natural language prompts. This makes it much faster to generate structured content, for example, building a product list or campaign page just by telling Copilot what you need.

Power Platform Gets Smarter – Low-Code and Agents

For makers using Power Apps, Microsoft announced a brand-new workspace (currently in preview) that combines planning, data modelling, and app building in an AI-driven canvas. 

This workspace allows you to chat with Copilot, refine your app by pointing and clicking, and see real-time updates dramatically simplifying how custom business apps are built. On the data front, Microsoft expanded Dataverse capabilities: a Python SDK is now available in preview, and the “Model Context Protocol” (MCP) Server is generally available. These updates let you build agentic workflows that interact directly with data.

AI-Driven Security and Threat Detection

Security was another big focus. Microsoft revealed a new Microsoft Defender Experts Suite, combining AI-powered managed services with human-led threat response and access to specialist security advisors. 

In addition, Security Copilot is now deeply integrated into Microsoft Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview, which means E5 license holders can leverage built-in AI agents for threat detection, response, and governance.

Windows and On-Device AI: Next Level Personalisation 

Microsoft is pushing more AI directly onto devices. At Ignite, they announced new Windows AI APIs, including on-device image generation (Stable Diffusion XL) and video super-resolution (VSR), enabling richer generative experiences without always going to the cloud. 

Plus, Windows 365 for Agents (in preview) will let AI agents run inside secure, policy-controlled Cloud PCs, which means AI assistants can operate like humans on a virtual machine.

Copilot for SMBs – Microsoft 365 Copilot Business

Ignite brought a big win for smaller businesses: Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, a streamlined Copilot product for companies with up to 300 users. Priced at $21/user per month, it offers summarisation, automation, and agent support scaled for smaller teams.

What This Means for You and Your Business 

  • Productivity: Copilot and agents make daily tasks more efficient, helping teams automate workflows, draft documents, and generate insights. 
  • Governance: With Agent 365 and Work IQ, organisations can confidently deploy AI while maintaining control, compliance, and visibility. 
  • Innovation: Power Platform enhancements will let non-developers build smarter apps faster, enabling teams to solve real business problems. 
  • Security: AI-powered threat protection and management tools give security teams stronger, more proactive defence. 
  • Accessibility: On-device AI means users get powerful capabilities even when offline or in environments with limited connectivity. 
  • SMB Empowerment: Small and midsize businesses can now benefit from Microsoft’s AI tools without needing enterprise-scale infrastructure. 

This year Microsoft Ignite showed that rather than just using AI, organisations will increasingly collaborate with it, leveraging agents for repetitive tasks, security, and productivity. 

Whether you’re an IT leader evaluating governance, a maker building apps in Power Platform, or a security pro, the new Ignite tools are designed to help you scale in a smart, safe, and powerful way. If you would like any further information about any of the Ignite highlights, contact our team who can help.