Microsoft has just announced a suite of autonomous AI agents for its Dynamics 365 platform, intensifying competition with Salesforce in the enterprise AI market. The tech giant will launch ten new autonomous agents designed to empower sales, service, finance and supply chain teams.

Available in public preview starting next month, these AI agents aim to automate complex tasks and orchestrate business processes in organizations. They outperform traditional chatbots and previous AI offerings from Microsoft by reasoning about intent and context, making judgments based on a broader data set.

“We view these agents as true applications of the AI ​​era,” said Bryan Goode, vice president of Microsoft, in an interview with VentureBeat. “Every line of business system that exists today is going to be reimagined as an agent sitting on top of a co-pilot.”

Clash of the AI ​​titans: Microsoft’s counterattack against Salesforce’s Agentforce

The move comes just weeks after Salesforce unveiled its Agentforce platform, which CEO Marc Benioff aggressively promoted while criticizing Microsoft’s Copilot. Benioff recently called Microsoft Copilot “closest to Clippy 2.0,” referring to Microsoft’s much-maligned Office assistant from the 1990s.

Microsoft’s new offering appears to be a direct challenge to Salesforce’s Agentforce. While Salesforce’s platform relies on its Atlas reasoning engine, Microsoft’s agents rely on advanced language models and the company’s vast stores of enterprise data.

Goode emphasized that these agents are not intended to replace human workers but to enhance their capabilities. “In many cases, these agents can actually allow users to add functionality that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do,” he explained.

Battle for AI dominance: Microsoft and Salesforce lead the charge

The technology industry is witnessing a paradigm shift as AI agents move from experimental technology to basic business tools. Microsoft and Salesforce are at the forefront, each leveraging their unique strengths to shape the future of enterprise software.

Microsoft’s strategy is based on its omnipresent presence in the areas of office productivity and cloud computing. By integrating AI agents with familiar tools like Microsoft 365 and Azure, the company aims to make AI adoption seamless for its large user base. Salesforce, for its part, is banking on its CRM expertise and the power of its recently developed Data Cloud to create AI agents that understand and optimize customer relationships.

The success of these platforms could redefine the future of work and enterprise software. As AI agents become more sophisticated, they can blur the lines between human and machine tasks, which could reshape organizational structures and job roles.

However, challenges remain. Data privacy concerns, the need for transparent AI decision-making, and the potential for job losses are issues that both companies must approach carefully. Their ability to address these concerns while delivering tangible business value will likely determine the pace and extent of adoption of AI agents.

As this AI revolution unfolds, one thing is clear: the enterprise software landscape is on the cusp of a major transformation. Whether it’s Microsoft’s vision of “agents plus co-pilot plus human” or Salesforce’s “human at the helm” approach, the future of work is being rewritten: an AI agent at the times.