Greetings from Austin. I'm here to speak at the 2025 ANA AI and Technology for Marketers Conference. LMK if you're in town.
In the news: You're already sick of the words "Agent" and "Agentic," but you know they are the new-new thing. You may not have heard the initialism "MCP," but you are going to start hearing about it now.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open-source standard that lets AI models connect directly to the systems where your data lives. Instead of requiring custom integrations for each data source, MCP creates a standardized way for AI assistants to access, query, and interact with business tools, repositories, and software in real time. This solves one of AI's biggest limitations: being isolated from the systems where work actually happens.
In a surprising move, OpenAI announced yesterday it will adopt rival Anthropic's MCP across its product line. CEO Sam Altman confirmed on X that OpenAI will integrate MCP support into its Agents SDK immediately, with the ChatGPT desktop app and Responses API following soon.
This cross-company adoption is a huge shift in the AI landscape. As competitors, these companies typically develop proprietary systems, but MCP (which isn't new, BTW) has been super hot recently. Since Anthropic open-sourced the protocol, companies including Block, Apollo, Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph have added MCP support to their platforms. With OpenAI jumping on board, this could become a meaningful standard.
Anthropic's Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger welcomed the development, noting MCP has become "a thriving open standard with thousands of integrations and growing." The protocol effectively eliminates the need for custom implementations between AI models and each data source.
For enterprise users, this means AI assistants (Agents) can now directly access business tools, software, content repositories, and development environments with a standardized approach. Rather than developing separate connectors for each system, developers can expose data through "MCP servers" and build "MCP clients" that connect to those servers on command.
If you want to dig a bit deeper, I wrote about MCPs back in November 2024 when they were announced. I'll do an MCPs for Marketers essay this weekend. Until then, rejoice! Agents and agentic systems just got easier to create.
As always your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.
