MCP: the standard that connects AI to your systems
For a couple of years, every assistant was wired to company systems by hand. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that proposes a common way to expose data and actions to a model, and the major platforms now support it.
What it solves
The problem wasn't technical so much as combinatorial: every assistant times every tool meant a different integration. MCP defines a common contract, so one connector serves any client that speaks the protocol.
For a company that means less throwaway work: if you switch model providers tomorrow, the connectors still stand.
What an MCP server exposes
A server can offer three things: resources to read, tools that take action, and prompt templates. The distinction matters, because reading a document and issuing a purchase order don't deserve the same level of control.
- Resources: documents, records or read-only queries.
- Tools: actions with side effects, such as creating a ticket or updating a record.
- Templates: reusable instructions for frequent tasks.
What to check before connecting it
Opening a system to a model is, in practice, handing over a credential. The questions are the ones you'd ask of any integration, plus one specific to AI: what happens if the content it reads contains instructions.
- Credentials scoped to the least access possible, never an administrator account.
- Actions with side effects kept separate from reads, with human approval for the sensitive ones.
- A log of which tool was invoked, with which parameters and what came back.
- A stance on prompt injection: content the model reads is data, not orders.
- Usage limits and timeouts, so one failure doesn't cascade.
When it's worth it and when it isn't
MCP shines when several tools must be available to an assistant and the set will keep growing. If the case is a single, stable, well-documented integration, calling the API directly is still simpler to maintain.
The rule is the usual one: a standard saves future work, it doesn't replace designing permissions or validating what the model returns.
To take back to your operation
MCP standardizes the connection, not the security. Define what the assistant may read and may execute first, then how it connects.
See our system integration service and what we need to assess your case.