Stop Building Agent Islands: A 2025 Interoperability Playbook

2025 may be the “year of the agent,” but the biggest blocker isn’t building one agent—it’s getting many agents from different vendors to work together reliably. Recent launches and research make this urgent: OpenAI’s AgentKit formalizes build–measure–optimize loops for agents, Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 brings an agentic layer to Customer 360 and Slack, and Microsoft is pushing the open Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) protocol and multi‑agent orchestration across Foundry, Copilot Studio, and Teams. AgentKit • Agentforce 360 • Microsoft A2A.

Why interoperability matters now

• Market proof: Investors are backing production agent deployments, e.g., Wonderful’s $100M Series A for customer service agents. TechCrunch
• Enterprise momentum: Retailers like Williams‑Sonoma are adopting Agentforce 360 to enhance service at scale. Salesforce
• Reality check: Microsoft’s synthetic marketplace shows that naïve agents fail in the wild; robust protocols, guardrails, and evals are non‑negotiable. TechCrunch
• Cultural signal: WIRED’s “all my employees are AI agents” story underscores the promise—and the pitfalls—of agentic teams without governance. WIRED

The two standards you should know: A2A and MCP

A2A (Agent‑to‑Agent) defines how agents discover each other, exchange goals, and invoke actions across apps, clouds, and orgs—without exposing internal logic. It uses JSON‑RPC over HTTPS with an Agent Card for capabilities and auth. A2A spec • Microsoft announcement.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) standardizes how agents use external tools and data sources (servers) without bespoke integrations—now supported across Teams AI Library and Copilot Studio. Teams AI Library • Copilot Studio.

Platform landscape in 60 seconds

• OpenAI AgentKit: Visual Agent Builder, ChatKit for embeddable UIs, Evals for Agents, and a connector registry for secure tool access. Pricing starts after Nov 1, 2025; builder iterations are free until run. AgentKit • DevDay • Pricing
• Salesforce Agentforce 360: Agentic layer on Customer 360 with Slack integration, hybrid reasoning, and Google Gemini partnership for model choice and Workspace interop. Agentforce 360 • Google partnership
• Microsoft Foundry + Copilot Studio: Multi‑agent orchestration with A2A/MCP support and Teams‑native agent experiences; designed for enterprise governance and SLAs. A2A • Copilot Studio

A 10‑day interoperability plan (A2A + MCP)

1. Days 1–2: Pick one high‑leverage workflow. E.g., customer email → triage → order lookup → RMA creation → Slack update. Quantify current handle time (AHT) and resolution rate.
2. Day 3: Define agents and boundaries. Draft Agent Cards: Support Router (AgentKit), Order Ops (Agentforce 360), Internal IT/Slack Notifier (Copilot Studio). Decide read/write scopes.
3. Day 4: Connect tools via MCP. Expose data/tools (Shopify/Woo/WMS) through MCP servers; minimize direct SDK coupling.
4. Day 5: Wire A2A paths. Implement task hand‑offs (JSON‑RPC) Support Router → Order Ops → IT/Slack Notifier with auth and audit.
5. Day 6: Guardrails. Add human‑in‑the‑loop for refunds >$X, PII scrubbing, and outbound messaging policies. See our Impersonation Checklist.
6. Day 7: Evals + tracing. Use AgentKit Evals and OpenTelemetry traces; define SLOs (AHT, deflection, accuracy). Read: Agent Observability.
7. Day 8: Safety tests. Run adversarial prompts and synthetic marketplace scenarios (coupon abuse, policy edge cases). Incorporate auto‑rollback on policy violations.
8. Day 9: Pilot in one channel. Start with email or web chat only; cap concurrency; enable transcript review queues.
9. Day 10: Go/No‑Go. Compare pilot SLOs vs. baseline; if green, add voice or social DMs next. For rollout tactics, see our 2025 Buyer’s Guide.

KPIs and observability (don’t skip)

• Accuracy: % correct action vs. gold standard labels (use sampled audits weekly).
• Speed: AHT reduction and 95th‑percentile time‑to‑first‑action.
• Coverage: % intents handled end‑to‑end without human; escalation quality score.
• Safety: PII leakage rate, policy violations, and impersonation attempts blocked. Use Evals for Agents in AgentKit and centralized logs. AgentKit

Instrument every agent with tracing and structured events; treat AgentOps like DevOps. Start with our 1‑week playbook: Agent Observability (AgentOps).

Security and governance essentials

• Identity and auth: Use platform SSO/RBAC. A2A endpoints should require mTLS and signed Agent Cards; log every cross‑agent invocation. Microsoft A2A
• Least privilege: Separate read vs. write scopes per agent. Rotate secrets via your cloud KMS.
• Outbound controls: DKIM/DMARC for email‑sending agents, rate limits, and kill‑switches. See our Security Checklist.

Example: E‑commerce returns, end‑to‑end

1. Customer emails about a damaged item. Support Router (AgentKit) classifies intent and opens a case. AgentKit
2. Via A2A, it delegates to Order Ops (Agentforce 360) to verify order, warranty, and inventory; creates RMA and shipping label. Agentforce 360
3. IT/Slack Notifier (Copilot Studio) posts a Slack thread with context and a one‑click approval if refund exceeds threshold; MCP fetches policy text for the approver. Copilot Studio

This mirrors how leading retailers are adopting agentic service patterns today. Reference

Buy vs. build: quick guidance

• Start with your core system of record. Deep Salesforce footprint? Lean toward Agentforce for native workflows and Slack reach. Microsoft 365 + Azure? Copilot Studio/Foundry first. Web/app teams and custom front‑ends? AgentKit’s ChatKit + Evals accelerates you.
• Standardize on A2A + MCP. This is your long‑term hedge against lock‑in—connect agents across stacks as capabilities evolve. A2A
• Prove value in 10 days, then scale. Pilot a single high‑volume intent; add channels after SLOs are green. For a fast start in commerce, see our 7‑Day Shopify/Woo playbook and 14‑Day Browser Agent guide.

Final take

Agents are moving from demos to durable workflows. The winners in 2025–2026 won’t be those with the flashiest single agent—they’ll be the teams that make agents interoperate, observe them like production software, and govern them like critical infrastructure.

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