What is MCP?

The open standard that lets AI assistants talk to your business systems — and why it changes everything.

The simplest explanation of what MCP is and why it matters.

The Short Version

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol.

It is an open standard that lets AI assistants — Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT — talk to your business systems. Think of it as the USB cable between AI and your data.

Before MCP: Chaos

Before MCP, every AI integration was bespoke and fragile. One company built a ChatGPT plugin for their API. Another built a Claude tool. A third built a Copilot connector. Each one was different. Each one broke when the API changed. None of them talked to each other.

A bank that wanted three AI tools connected to three systems needed nine separate integrations — and an engineering team to maintain all of them.

What MCP Changes

MCP provides a standardised way for AI assistants to discover, call, and receive results from tools that connect to real-world data.

When an AI assistant supports MCP, it can use any MCP server automatically — the same way a laptop can use any USB device. The AI does not need to know how M-Pesa works. It just knows how to talk to an MCP server, and the MCP server knows how to talk to M-Pesa.

Anthropic announced MCP in November 2024. Since then, it has become the de facto standard. Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Cloudflare have all embraced it. Every major AI assistant now supports MCP.

Why It Matters for Your Business

AI assistants are already part of your daily work. You use Claude to draft emails. You use Copilot to summarise documents. You use ChatGPT to research. But none of these tools can see your actual business data.

The problem: Your AI lives in a bubble. It knows the internet. It does not know your M-Pesa balance, your Salesforce pipeline, or which suppliers are TCC-compliant. So you copy data out, paste it in, and hope the AI does not hallucinate.

MCP fixes that.

With MCP, your AI can ask questions like:

“How much came in via M-Pesa today?” — and get a real answer from Safaricom
“Show me the top 5 deals closing this quarter” — and get real Salesforce data
“Is this supplier TCC-compliant?” — and get a real KRA response

The AI does not guess. It queries your systems directly.

The Hosting Question

With traditional APIs, the model is simple: Stripe hosts the Stripe API. Salesforce hosts the Salesforce API. You consume them.

With MCP, the hosting model is open. Some developers run MCP servers on their laptops. Some companies host them internally. Some SaaS providers host them in the cloud.

For enterprises, this matters.

A bank cannot run its MCP server on a developer’s laptop. A SACCO cannot expose its member data through a weekend project. Someone needs to host and secure the MCP infrastructure at enterprise grade — with encryption, tenant isolation, audit logging, and uptime guarantees.

That is what Msharti does.