Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Snowflake and ServiceNow have backed a new AI backend software protocol called Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD, agentic resource discovery).

The Information reported that ARD is also drawing attention because it could give incumbent enterprise software companies an option to build AI businesses without having their large customer bases encroached on by Anthropic and OpenAI.

ARD lets enterprise users request work from GitHub Copilot, Google Gemini and Salesforce CRM apps. Those apps then automatically find and connect AI functions across other apps used by the company that can help with the task.

The functions and apps being connected only need to follow ARD.

Microsoft and others envision using ARD to make their apps a gateway to access all AI, a one-stop window.

Microsoft said in a blog post, "ARD helps AI clients discover capabilities, but it does not replace authentication, authorization, governance or organizational trust decisions."

The Information reported that ARD can be seen as an extension of the open standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) that Anthropic created last year.

MCP is a standard that helps AI agents access data from other applications, and Microsoft, OpenAI and Google also support it. As most enterprise apps build their own AI or agents, there is a growing need for a new standard to access these functions in one place, which led to the creation of ARD.