Govern AI models, tools, and agents with Azure API Management | OD831
Anish Tallapureddy and Mike Budzynski explain how Azure API Management’s AI Gateway can act as a governance layer for AI workloads, covering endpoint exposure, request routing, policy-based guardrails, cost controls, and production telemetry for models, tools, and agents across providers.
Overview
AI workloads often behave differently from traditional APIs: they can involve multiple models, tools, and agents across providers, which makes production concerns like routing, cost control, safety, and observability harder.
This session shows how to use Azure API Management (APIM) with its AI Gateway capabilities to:
- Expose AI endpoints through a consistent gateway surface
- Route requests across providers/models
- Apply policies for governance and guardrails
- Add telemetry and token metrics for operational visibility and cost tracking
- Move from a single request to a more production-ready setup
What the AI Gateway is used for
The presenters position APIM’s AI Gateway as a universal governance layer for AI traffic, focusing on enterprise needs such as:
- Governance controls for models and tools
- Security controls for tool access and usage
- Observability for AI requests (including token-level metrics)
- Scalability and operational consistency
Model governance and policy enforcement
The session includes a model governance demo centered on using APIM policies to enforce guardrails when calling AI endpoints.
Key themes called out:
- Centralizing governance at the gateway rather than scattering controls across apps
- Enforcing consistent behavior via policy (for example, safety and usage constraints)
New features highlighted
The video calls out newer capabilities in the AI Gateway area, including:
- Unified Model API
- Token metrics
- Bring Your Own Model (BYO) support
Tool governance (including MCP servers)
Beyond models, the session covers governing tools that agents can call, including:
- Managing MCP servers and APIs as tools
- Tool security considerations when agents are allowed to invoke external capabilities
Tool discovery and agent integration
A demo shows how AI Gateway can support:
- Tool discovery
- Agent integration patterns where agents use governed tools via the gateway
Enterprise catalog and agent governance announcements
The session also mentions enterprise-level governance concepts such as:
- An enterprise catalog for governed assets
- Agent governance updates, including an A2A GA announcement