Agents Beyond Boundaries

The AI landscape is undergoing a significant shift. While initial deployments focused on internal applications, we’re now seeing agents extend beyond enterprise walls to interact with external systems and partner platforms.

This marks the evolution from isolated AI initiatives to interconnected ecosystems where agents from different organizations collaborate seamlessly. Imagine:

  • Procurement agents negotiating pricing in real-time with supplier counterparts
  • Healthcare providers coordinating eligibility instantly with insurers
  • Banks sharing risk assessments directly with compliance agencies

The challenge lies in enabling this cross-organizational collaboration, as today’s IT infrastructure lacks the built-in trust and communication protocols for autonomous agent interactions.

The Coordination Problem

When agents from different companies need to work together, several issues arise:

  1. Lack of shared identity: Agents can’t reliably authenticate each other or verify permissions
  2. Proprietary frameworks: Each company develops agents using different technologies and data structures
  3. Integration complexity: Creating point-to-point connections for every interaction becomes unsustainable

The result is brittle, hard-coded workflows that struggle to scale beyond isolated use cases.

The Emergence of Agent Networks

To address this gap, new infrastructure solutions are emerging – like AGNTCY (initially open-sourced by Cisco in March 2025) – which aims to provide a common foundation for secure agent communication and discovery.

With support from major players including Google Cloud, Oracle, Dell Technologies, and Red Hat under Linux Foundation governance, AGNTCY offers:

  • Discovery: Agents can find and understand each other’s capabilities
  • Identity: Cryptographically verifiable credentials for secure access control
  • Messaging: Standardized protocols for reliable communication
  • Observability: End-to-end visibility into agent interactions

A recent Cisco/ServiceNow collaboration demonstrates this in practice, connecting network intelligence with workflow automation through a shared AGNTCY layer.

“We launched the internet of agents to solve how different systems can find, verify, and collaborate securely,” said Vijoy Pandey, SVP at Cisco. “By creating a common infrastructure for discovery and communication, we’re moving beyond custom integrations toward an open ecosystem where AI can truly work together.”

The vision extends beyond frameworks – aiming to establish agent interoperability as a fundamental component of digital business across organizational boundaries.