A2A vs MCP: Choosing Your Agent Infrastructure
The 'HTTP moment' for AI Agents is here. This guide covers the two dominant protocols shaping enterprise agent interoperability: Google's A2A (Agent-to-Agent) for orchestration and Anthropic's MCP (Model Context Protocol) for data access. Learn when to use each, how they fit together, and get strategic recommendations for your infrastructure.
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The Protocol Wars: Choosing Your Infrastructure
The 'HTTP moment' for AI Agents - understanding the two dominant standards
We are witnessing the 'HTTP moment' for AI Agents. Just as the internet required standard protocols to scale, the Agentic Web requires standardized ways for agents to communicate with each other (Orchestration) and with software tools (Execution). Two dominant standards have emerged: Google's A2A (Agent-to-Agent) and Anthropic's MCP (Model Context Protocol).
- Microsoft's Pivot: Microsoft joined the A2A camp in May 2025, solidifying it as the enterprise standard for agent orchestration
- Developer Choice: MCP has seen 400% growth in open-source tooling, becoming the 'USB standard' for connecting LLMs to data
- Consolidation: Deloitte predicts 80% of enterprise agents will rely on these two protocols by Q4 2026
Interoperability is no longer optional. Siloed agents that cannot communicate with external vendors or internal tools will become legacy debt within 18 months.
The stack is splitting: High-level negotiation (A2A) vs. Low-level execution (MCP). Understanding this split is key to architecture decisions.