Enterprise Managed Auth: keeping MCP alive and relevant

Enterprise Managed Auth is an effort to keep MCP alive and make it relevant. (Read the announcement.)

What this means for you

1. If you sell AI agents to enterprise customers: the window for selling agents to enterprises with ease is probably closing fast. Once companies settle in, you'll have to go through the IT procurement cycle to get your agent added to their identity provider as an available service.

2. If you use AI agents personally: this should change nothing?

3. If you offer your services through an MCP server: you'll need to implement this protocol to offer them to enterprise customers.

Why the window was open

Anyone in sales knows how hard it is to sell to enterprise customers, and how long it takes (often months) to get a pilot approved.

The AI space was a bit different. There were no existing products, and the usage and access models were completely different from traditional ones. Companies prioritized awareness and adoption of AI tools over securing them.

Billing followed as the bills arrived. Now security teams are following up as breaches get discovered.

The trade-off

At a high level, Enterprise Managed Auth makes it easier for enterprises to regulate which agents can be used and which downstream MCP servers an agent can access on a user's behalf. At the same time, it consolidates the market and makes it harder for new players to get in with the same ease.