Armchair Architects: Open Standards for Enterprise Agents

This episode of Armchair Architects explores the critical role of open standards in agentic AI, focusing on protocols like Model Context Protocol, agent-to-agent communication, observability with Open Telemetry, and agent identity. The architects discuss how these elements enable secure, interoperable, and responsible AI integration in enterprises, and offer practical guidance for architects navigating the rapidly evolving agent ecosystem. By the end of this episode, you will … - know more about the four key open standards shaping agentic AI: MCP, agent-to-agent protocols, OTEL for observability, and OAuth for identity, and why these are foundational for enterprise adoption. - understand the importance of following and contributing to open-source communities and standards to ensure interoperability and responsible AI deployment. - gain practical strategies for evaluating, adopting, and requesting these standards in enterprise RFPs to drive market convergence and ensure robust, future-proof agent architectures. Resources - Model Context Protocol (MCP) https://modelcontextprotocol.io - Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol https://github.com/a2aproject - OpenTelemetry https://opentelemetry.io - Web Authorization Protocol (oauth) https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/oauth/about/ - Blog: Agent Factory: Designing the open agentic web stack https://azure.microsoft.com/blog/agent-factory-designing-the-open-agentic-web-stack/ - Agentic AI Foundation https://aaif.io/ Related Episodes - Watch more episodes of Armchair Architects https://aka.ms/ArmchairArchitects - Watch more episodes of the Azure Essentials Show https://aka.ms/AzureEssentialsShow Connect - David Blank-Edelman https://www.linkedin.com/in/dnblankedelman/ - Uli Homann https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichhomann/ - Eric Charran https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericcharran/ Chapters 00:00 Hey! Good news! 00:35 Welcome architects 01:10 Challenges for Enterprise 02:20 Model Context Protocol 03:24 Agent-to-agent Protocol 04