NOVEMBER 5TH, 2026
12:00PM - 1:00PM CDT
VIRTUAL WEBINAR
About This Webinar
This is a Microsoft-platform conversation about why the data foundation matters before AI agents get real access to enterprise data. It's not a how-to build guide. It's a why-this-matters-now: agents that reason, retrieve, and act need deep business context, and without the right foundation in place, that access becomes the risk rather than the win.
The talk covers the four things that have to be true first: clear data ownership, secured AI infrastructure guardrails, a unified trusted-data platform (Microsoft Fabric), and enforcement tooling that proves lineage and access (Purview, OneLake Catalog), framed as the protection layer, not a checklist. It closes by tying this foundation to what makes Microsoft's IQ layers (Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, Work IQ, Web IQ) safe and trustworthy to turn on. The governance work is what makes true enterprise intelligence, beyond bolt-on RAG, actually deployable.
Webinar Itinerary
Opening With the Problem (5 Min): AI pilots stall not from bad models, but from data nobody trusts.
Data Domains & Ownership (10 Min): Makes the case for business-side accountability over centralized IT, and lays out the stewardship hierarchy.
Azure Landing Zones, Extended for AI (10 Min): Covers the infrastructure guardrails that make AI workloads, including agents reaching outside the org, safe to run.
Microsoft Fabric as the Platform (10 Min): Shows how Fabric turns raw data into trusted, governed data that a semantic layer can be built on top of.
Governance Tools: Purview & OneLake Catalog (10 Min): Proves the governance model is real, not aspirational, through classification, lineage, and discovery.
Close (2–3 Min): Ties it together into one action item: name a domain owner this week.
Who This Webinar is For
Business & Domain Leaders
Own the data behind a function, finance, sales, operations, and are being asked to formalize that ownership as AI agents start reading and acting on it.
Data & Governance Leaders
Responsible for classification, lineage, and access control, the layer that decides whether "the AI can see this" is a governed decision or a guess.
Platform & Infrastructure Leaders
Own the Azure landing zone and are extending it to handle AI workloads and agents that reach outside the organization, where the guardrails have to hold before access is granted.
AI & Innovation Executives
Sponsoring Copilot, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, or agent rollouts, and need the underlying data foundation solid before turning on broader access.
Webinar Host
Jeff Armstrong
VP of Solution Delivery, Improving
With deep expertise in data warehousing, business intelligence, and enterprise data architecture on the Microsoft stack, Jeff has spent over 15 years building the governed, trustworthy data platforms that organizations rely on for reporting and analytics at scale. As Vice President of Solution Delivery for Operational Analytics at Improving, he's passionate about helping organizations get their data foundation right first, so the ownership, guardrails, and governance are in place before AI agents ever touch the data.
What's Next?
Your AI agents are only as safe as the data foundation underneath them. Register for Next Gen Data: The Foundation Microsoft IQ Depends On and get the roadmap: data ownership, secured infrastructure guardrails, Microsoft Fabric, and the governance tooling that proves it, before you flip the switch on Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, or the next agent rollout.