What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard through which AI models and agents access external data sources, tools, and systems. Instead of building a separate interface for every model-and-system combination, an MCP server exposes its capabilities once in a standardized way, and any MCP-capable client can use them. For process data this means an agent can query the process model, metrics, and case histories without a bespoke integration.

Why does this matter?

The limiting factor for agentic AI is rarely the model but access to reliable context. An open access standard decouples the tool landscape from the model in use and prevents organizations from permanently locking themselves to a single vendor.