Latest news with #TrustedAgentHuddle
Mint
03-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
AI agents are learning how to collaborate. Companies need to work with them
Developers are creating protocols to harness AI-powered agents into teams that handle everything from customer service and coding to supply chain, logistics, finance, marketing and business strategy. Companies should start planning for the next stage of artificial intelligence: the orchestration of multiple agents across their businesses. Most companies are still figuring out how to deploy even one AI-powered agent that can perform a task autonomously or in coordination with humans. But developers are creating protocols to harness these agents into teams that handle everything from customer service and coding to supply chain, logistics, finance, marketing and business strategy. Given the pace of innovation and the time it takes for organizations to adapt, companies will do themselves a favor by getting ready now for multiagent systems increasingly available later this year. Accenture's chief AI officer, Lan Guan, says only 10% to 15% of her clients currently use multiagent systems, but she expects that percentage to exceed 30% within 18 to 24 months. The professional services company has created a 15-agent system used for marketing, for example, comprising three 'super agents" that are responsible for coordinating 12 agents trained for specific tasks. It can plan a marketing campaign around a topic such as '2025 trends," conducting research, identifying similar past campaigns and addressing questions like a human would, according to Guan. All told, Accenture has more than 50 multiagent systems today for a range of industries and markets, and expects that number to hit more than 100 by the end of the year. The firm said customers such as carmaker BMW, consumer-brands company Unilever and sports giant ESPN are currently adopting these systems. Accenture last month introduced Trusted Agent Huddle, which it said allows agent-to-agent interoperability with partners such as technology companies Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow. Multiagent capabilities are about to become more widely available. Salesforce and Google announced at the Google Next conference in April that they were working on a protocol called A2A, or Agent-to-Agent. The protocol, which allows agents within Salesforce's Agentforce ecosystem to interact with each other as well as external agents, focuses on areas such as authentication, identification and message passing, according to Gary Lerhaupt, vice president of product architecture for Agentforce. Work is under way with partners to develop prototype multiagents using A2A, he said. Keyway, a commercial real-estate tech startup based in New York, provides a glimpse into how the concept works in practice, according to co-founder and Chief Executive Matias Recchia. It offers asset managers and property managers a multiagent platform that uses coordinated interactions to address questions such as how to price a rental property or target amenities and incentives. The company has raised $45 million from investors including Canvas Ventures, Camber Creek and Thomvest. While Keyway's agents are specialized and can trigger each other through structured workflows, the company said, they still operate in a controlled, predefined sequence that requires human oversight such as setting prompts, reviewing outputs and supervising decisions. A true multiagent system, Recchia said, involves agents that dynamically reason, negotiate or collaborate in real time without requiring human-defined workflows, explicit prompts or manual coordination. In other words, the agents take initiative, adapt to new information and interact fluidly with other agents without waiting for human instruction. Companies can start to prepare for multiagents systems simply by creating standard, stand-alone agents. Once the proper protocols are ready, companies can orchestrate these agents into tackling complex, collaborative systems. Principle Financial Group has embedded individual AI agents across domains including software engineering co-pilots , claims summarization and post-call analytics, according to Chief Information Officer Kathy Kay. They largely operate within defined scopes, but the investment management and insurance company is actively building the technical foundation to support agent-to-agent collaboration, Kay said. That means developing data pipelines and governance models . Workflows will also have to evolve to accommodate real-time collaboration between humans and intelligent, adaptive AI systems, she said. Kay foresees strong potential for the use of multiagent systems in retirement services such as rollover optimization. In asset management, she expects multiagents to analyze unstructured market data, generate investment narratives and align findings across portfolios. Other uses include earnings call preparation, contact center intelligence and claims adjudication. 'These are not isolated functions," Kay said. 'They are systems of tasks that, when connected through intelligent agents, can drive faster insights and better outcomes across the enterprise." Write to Steven Rosenbush at
Business Wire
28-04-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Accenture Introduces Trusted Agent Huddle to Allow Seamless, First-of-its-Kind Multi-System AI Agent Collaboration Across the Enterprise
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has introduced Trusted Agent Huddle™ to allow first-of-its-kind multi-system agent collaboration across the enterprise. Part of AI Refinery, ™ the Trusted Agent Huddle will allow secure and seamless agent-to-agent interoperability across partners including Adobe, AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake and Workday. Agents developed by enterprise users will be able to seamlessly work together in a single platform, allowing organizations to select and manage the right agents for specific tasks and business objectives. Lan Guan, chief AI officer of Accenture, said, 'With the proliferation of AI agents across the enterprise, trust is the only limit to AI reaching its full potential, and seamless and secure multi-system collaboration between agents will further the impact and promise of what agentic AI can achieve. With the launch of Trusted Agent Huddle, for the first time, companies will be able to connect and orchestrate agents from different enterprise platforms within AI Refinery, enabling boundaryless capability and unprecedented levels of innovation.' With the use of Trusted Agent Huddle to publish and onboard agents into AI Refinery through open standardization protocols, such as Agent2Agent and Model Context Protocol, organizations can transform entire workflows, rather than isolated processes within single domains or systems. Additionally, the Trusted Agent Huddle will leverage a proprietary algorithm to evaluate and align agent performance. This certification process lays the foundation for future development of an agent trust score. Organizations with pre-existing agents based on cloud-hosted models would seamlessly integrate those agents into AI Refinery without impacting functionality, enabling future agents to be built on the platform. Accenture's agent builder can be used to adapt agents as business requirements change. FedEx is working with Accenture and NVIDIA to explore uses of Trusted Agent Huddle to drive greater resilience. 'FedEx is a trusted player at the center of the supply chain ecosystem. We work to make supply chains smarter for everyone, bringing people and businesses together to drive new efficiencies and growth," said Sriram Krishnasamy, chief transformation officer and chief digital & information officer, FedEx Corporation. "The Trusted Agent Huddle enables agents from different platforms to collaborate as one team and will help FedEx seamlessly engage and orchestrate information across the supply chain to accelerate innovation.' 'With the launch of Trusted Agent Huddle, we're helping enterprises like FedEx future proof their innovation and AI investments,' said Karthik Narain, group chief executive—Technology and chief technology officer, Accenture. 'Collaboration is the competitive differentiation of the future. Companies can best address today's volatility, while positioning themselves for future innovation and resilience, if they are able to harness AI innovation from across the ecosystem and not be limited to a single agent ecosystem.' Accenture AI Refinery—which is built on NVIDIA AI Enterprise —helps accelerate AI across the SaaS and cloud AI ecosystem. The new Trusted Agent Huddle can be used with the NVIDIA Agent Intelligence toolkit which provides seamless, heterogeneous connectivity between agents, tools and data. 'Collaboration and integration across platforms and systems is key to running AI agents that can reason and complete complex tasks,' said Justin Boitano, vice president of Enterprise AI Software Products at NVIDIA. 'Accenture AI Refinery, built with NVIDIA, offers a Trusted Agent Huddle to let enterprises orchestrate interoperable agent teams to drive efficiency and innovation across virtually every business function.' About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world's leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with approximately 801,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world's leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at Forward-Looking Statements Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 'may,' 'will,' 'should,' 'likely,' 'anticipates,' 'aspires,' 'expects,' 'intends,' 'plans,' 'projects,' 'believes,' 'estimates,' 'positioned,' 'outlook,' 'goal,' 'target' and similar expressions are used to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance nor promises that goals or targets will be met, and involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risks include, without limitation, that the use of AI could harm our business, damage our reputation or give rise to legal or regulatory action, as well as the risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed under the 'Risk Factors' heading in Accenture plc's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and other documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements in this news release speak only as of the date they were made, and Accenture undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements made in this news release or to conform such statements to actual results or changes in Accenture's expectations.
