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Enterprise-grade automation for intelligent decision-making now comes with traceable insights, thanks to a new integration in Azure.

Microsoft has enhanced its Azure AI Foundry Agent platform by embedding Deep Research, a cutting-edge toolset developed by OpenAI, into its ecosystem. This move is aimed at enabling enterprises to embed powerful research automation into their existing workflows.

At the core of this innovation is a new API and software development kit (SDK), which offers organizations the ability to seamlessly integrate Deep Research-as-a-Service across their infrastructure. According to Yina Arenas, Microsoft’s VP of Product for Core AI, developers can now extend these capabilities across data pipelines, existing systems, and application logic.

“Developers can program intelligent agents that gather, analyze, and present information with source-level transparency,” Arenas explained in a blog post. “They can invoke these agents directly from applications or through Azure-native tools like Logic Apps and Azure Functions.”

This advancement is expected to support enterprise users in performing automated, large-scale research tasks, providing insights that are both reliable and traceable to their original sources. These capabilities can be orchestrated not only by human users but also by other agents or business process automations.

According to Charlie Dai, principal analyst at Forrester Research, this marks a significant leap for industries looking to harness AI for more than just surface-level insights.

“This will have transformative applications—from finance, where it can aid in generating investment intelligence, to life sciences, where it could help accelerate drug discovery. Even manufacturing can benefit by optimizing supply chains,” said Dai.

Microsoft’s move represents a deeper alignment between AI research infrastructure and real-world business needs, opening the door for more scalable, accurate, and actionable intelligence across sectors.