Interoperability and MCP
Every platform now does more on its own, and that is exactly what risks re-siloing the enterprise. Each platform’s agents live inside its own walls, able to reach that platform’s data and tools but not the others. A real business process spans ServiceNow, Salesforce, Pega, Databricks and Microsoft at once, yet the agents cannot cross between them. Left alone, the agentic enterprise becomes five smart silos.
The Model Context Protocol is the open standard changing that. It gives agents a common way to reach data and tools across systems, one standard interface in place of a tangle of bespoke point integrations, and every major vendor is adopting it.
That makes interoperability tractable, and it also makes it a governance problem.
- Connect with standards. API-led integration between systems, and the Model Context Protocol where agents reach data and tools.
- Govern every connection. Identity first, least privilege and audited, because an ungoverned connection is a new attack surface.
- Design against re-siloing. Build the estate to interoperate from the start.
The re-siloing risk
The oldest problem in enterprise technology is that systems do not talk to each other. The current generation of platforms has an ironic way of making it worse. Each platform does more and more internally, which is genuinely good, but that self-sufficiency tempts organizations to let each one become its own walled world.
Agents sharpen the problem. A ServiceNow agent lives in ServiceNow, with ServiceNow’s data and tools. A Salesforce agent lives in Salesforce. Each is capable inside its own walls and helpless outside them. The processes that matter, such as serving a constituent, resolving an incident or processing a claim, span several platforms at once, and an agent that cannot reach across the walls can only do part of the job.
The risk is a new and more expensive kind of silo: not disconnected databases, but disconnected intelligence. Five platforms full of capable agents that cannot cooperate is not an agentic enterprise. It is five agentic islands.
What MCP is and why it matters
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard for connecting agents and clients to data and tools across systems. It is a common plug that lets an agent reach a tool or a dataset regardless of which platform it lives on.
The problem it solves is the old integration tangle. Connecting a set of systems traditionally meant building and maintaining a web of bespoke point to point integrations, brittle and expensive to keep working through every upgrade. The protocol replaces that with one standard interface: a system exposes its capabilities through a server, and any aware agent can use them without a custom integration for each pairing.
Two things make it matter more than the usual integration standard. It is built for agents specifically, which is how an agent reaches the tools and data it needs to do work, and every major vendor is adopting it. A standard is only as valuable as its adoption, and this one is converging into the connective tissue of the agentic enterprise because the industry is building to it at once.
MCP across the five platforms
The strongest evidence that the protocol is real is how broadly the major platforms have already shipped it.
| Platform | What is available |
|---|---|
| ServiceNow | An IT operations server exposes operations capabilities to external tools, with role-based access control and audit built in |
| Databricks | Support in Unity Catalog and managed servers, with agent tools giving external agents governed access to enterprise data |
| Microsoft Sentinel | A server that lets agents query security data in natural language |
| Microsoft Fabric | A real-time intelligence connection that lets agents work over streaming data |
| Copilot and Power Platform | Copilot Studio agents connect to external tools and data through the protocol |
The point is not any single implementation. It is that platforms which compete fiercely for the same budgets are independently building to the same open protocol, and governing access through it with identity, permissions and audit rather than exposing it raw. An organization that builds to it inherits connectivity it would otherwise have to wire by hand, system by system.
The interoperability playbook
Connecting the estate without creating new risk comes down to a few principles that balance openness with control.
- Standards over point integrations. Use API-led integration for system to system flows and the protocol for agent access to tools and data. Point integrations multiply with every new pairing; a standard collapses that sprawl into one pattern.
- Govern every connection. Each connection is an access path, so treat the agent as an identity, grant least privilege, and audit what it reaches.
- Design against re-siloing. Architect the estate to interoperate from the start instead of letting each platform harden into a walled world that later has to be pried open.
- Keep people accountable across platforms. A process that spans platforms needs oversight that spans them too, with approval gates and audit that do not stop at a platform boundary.
Interoperability is as much a governance problem as a technical one. An organization that connects its platforms without governing the connections has traded five silos for one large, unwatched surface.
The Varmoda approach
Varmoda connects the platforms and governs the connections, so an agency’s investment in ServiceNow, Salesforce, Pega, Databricks and Microsoft becomes one estate rather than five silos.
Varmoda’s teams integrate with standards, using API-led integration where systems talk to systems and the Model Context Protocol where agents reach data and tools, rather than accumulating brittle point integrations. Every connection is governed: agents are treated as identities, access is least privilege, and what each agent can reach is audited. Delivery is United States based and secure.
The aim is simple. Connect the platforms, govern the connections. The agentic enterprise pays off only if its agents can cooperate across the estate, and that stays safe only if every connection between them is governed.