II. Default to Open

Choose open protocols over perfect proprietary ones

Enterprise AI adoption depends on interoperability. Just as the internet required TCP/IP to enable communication between diverse systems, enterprise AI requires standardized, open protocols for agents to communicate, regardless of their underlying implementation.

Open standards in enterprise AI define how agents discover each other, exchange information, negotiate capabilities, and coordinate actions. The choice between open and proprietary protocols will determine whether you build an ecosystem or a silo.

Why Open Wins

• Ecosystem growth - Open protocols allow third-party innovation
• Vendor independence - Avoid lock-in to specific AI providers
• Community debugging - More eyes find and fix more issues
• Faster adoption - Developers prefer open standards
• Future-proofing - Open standards evolve with community needs

The Standards That Matter

Key protocols your enterprise needs:

• Model Context Protocol (MCP) for agent-to-tool communication
• OpenAI Function Calling and Anthropic Tool Use for structured interactions
• OpenAPI/Swagger for API discovery and documentation
• OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect for authentication/authorization
• CloudEvents for event-driven agent coordination
• OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing and observability
• JSON-LD for semantic data exchange

Implementation Strategy

1. Adopt early - Even imperfect open standards beat perfect proprietary ones
2. Contribute back - Help improve the standards you use
3. Build adapters - Create bridges to proprietary systems when necessary
4. Document everything - Your integration patterns help others

The Cost of Proprietary

Every proprietary protocol you create becomes technical debt. You must maintain it, document it, support it, and eventually migrate away from it. Open protocols distribute this cost across the community.

Organizations that default to open will build composable AI systems where any agent can be swapped, upgraded, or extended. Those that default to proprietary will create intelligent silos that become tomorrow’s legacy systems.