CData has announced the launch of a new managed Model Context Protocol (MCP) platform bringing together AI assistants, agent orchestration, workflow automation, and embedded AI applications—combined with access to over 300 enterprise data sources.
According to the company, Connect AI preserves data semantics and relationships in enterprise data to give AI agents better context while still providing governance over that data access.
CData’s Connect AI inherits the existing security and authentication protocols set up in the source system. Data access gets logged under the identity of the authenticated user or agent, and additional controls can be layered on top and managed in Connect AI.
Some example use cases that the new offering can enable include sales teams getting pipeline insights from Claude, marketing teams being able to analyze campaigns using ChatGPT, or finance teams being able to use Copilot to get real-time budget updates and financial reports.
IT and development teams can also bring in agents they’ve created in other platforms to give those agents access to data that will provide them with more context.
“Enterprises that want to safely and effectively put their business data to work with AI need real-time access combined with semantic understanding. AI needs to comprehend what data means, not just where it lives,” said Manish Patel, chief product officer of CData. “With Connect AI, companies can for the first time give AI applications governed, live access to data across hundreds of systems with the contextual intelligence that transforms AI from a productivity experiment into a trusted enterprise tool.”
