For organisations, MCP offers a standard way to connect AI assistants to internal systems. Doing it well requires governance.
Common Enterprise Uses
- Knowledge bases and document management.
- CRM and support systems.
- Data warehouses and BI tools.
- Ticketing and project management.
- Internal APIs and workflows.
Governance
- Approved server registry: vetted servers employees may use.
- Ownership: each server has an owning team responsible for security and maintenance.
- Access control: users reach only data they're already authorised to see.
- Data classification: decide which data may flow to which AI applications and models.
Security
- Central authentication with single sign-on.
- Gateways enforcing policy, logging and rate limits across servers.
- Least-privilege scopes and read-only defaults.
- Monitoring for unusual access.
Rollout
Start with read-only, low-sensitivity integrations; expand to write actions with approval flows as confidence grows.
Measure Value
Track usage, time saved and issues; retire servers nobody uses.