IT Automation in the Age of AI Agents: Why LLMs Need a New Approach

Traditional IT automation tools are ill-suited for AI agents, which require dynamic tool discovery rather than predefined workflows. Current systems lead to integration complexity, performance degradation from tool overload in the context window, and chaotic multi-user authentication. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is proposed as a new client-server architecture to standardize how AI agents interact with external systems. MCP uses progressive discovery to reveal tools hierarchically, preventing context overload, and has built-in multi-tenancy to handle user permissions securely. This approach simplifies building flexible AI agents by abstracting the complexities of tool integration and authentication.