In our first Antares webinar for 2025, Greg Brown was joined by our in-house team of experts, including Sulabh Jain (CTO), Martin Marek (Data & AI Practice Lead), and Janaka Amarasekera (Modern Work Practice Lead). We’re excited to share what we’ve learned about Microsoft’s ecosystem for 2025, focusing on three critical areas that will transform how organisations leverage technology: data management evolution, AI agents revolution, and modern work transformation. Here are our biggest takeaways from the webinar that you can view here:
Understanding Your Data Landscape
The digital age has created unprecedented data challenges, with the Microsoft ecosystem alone processing over 2.5 exabytes daily. Organisations are struggling with fundamental questions: Where does my data live? What risks exist? Is my data AI-ready?
For 2025, understanding your data will be foundational to everything else. Marton points out that “AI is going to be the UI to your data,” making it critical to have proper guardrails in place. This means not just cataloguing information but implementing processes to identify sensitive data, reduce overexposure risks, and prepare your environment for AI integration.
Before deploying any advanced capabilities, you’ll need clear insights into your data landscape using analytics tools that align with your organisation’s specific risk tolerance.
The AI Agents Revolution
The biggest shift happening right now is around AI agents, which are transforming how we interact with technology. Unlike traditional AI models that simply generate content, agents can take action in the world.
Sulabh explains that “an agent doesn’t just generate, it takes actions, it learns from the result and can adapt.” This capability allows agents to decide which tools to use, when to use them, and how to respond based on real-time feedback. Microsoft’s Azure AI Agent service is designed to help deploy, scale and manage these agents with enterprise-ready capabilities, reducing development time from months to weeks. These agents can fetch information from multiple sources, connect to workflows, and execute tasks that previously required human intervention.
Looking forward, you’ll see agents embedded throughout the Microsoft ecosystem, from SharePoint to Teams meetings. The key advantage is that these tools are enterprise-grade, with built-in security, connectivity, and model flexibility.
Modernising Work Processes
In 2025, successful organisations will move beyond just implementing AI tools to fundamentally reimagining how work happens. We’re seeing four key modern work trends that will provide the foundation for AI integration.
Janaka highlights that “we’re moving away from the traditional approach where it takes the bulk of the responsibility and accountability for data within the organisation. We’re seeing more and more of this push back to the business from an accountability perspective.” This democratisation of data means business units can manage their own data assets using self-service tools and language-driven analytics.
The focus is shifting toward automating routine tasks, improving document management, and enhancing communication. Customers are exploring ways to give time back to staff – not to increase workloads, but to improve wellbeing and support career development. Implementing AI document management will address critical challenges around security automation, data extraction accuracy, and content lifecycle management, all while removing the burden from users to understand the ins and outs of records management.
Next Steps for Your Organisation
As we look ahead to the rest of 2025, the Microsoft ecosystem will continue to evolve rapidly, with key components from modern work products, fabric capabilities, and intelligent apps coming together through Copilot and Foundry.
Remember that over 90% of organisations qualify for technology enablement funding from Microsoft to help get started with these initiatives. Whether you’re looking at data optimisation, employee experience enhancement, or intelligent application development, there are pathways available now.
To succeed, you’ll need a clear AI strategy and governance framework that takes into account security, compliance, cost management, and continuous monitoring. The fundamentals of best practice around platform management still apply – Copilot isn’t changing security principles, but it is changing how users interact with information.
Don’t feel you need to solve every problem at once. Start with clear use cases, balance your approach, and remember that while your environment may never be fully “AI-ready,” understanding where risks lie allows you to deploy solutions appropriately while continuing to improve your foundation.
