Google Cloud has launched the Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A), a groundbreaking open standard designed to enable AI agents to collaborate across enterprise systems regardless of their underlying frameworks or vendors. The protocol, announced on April 9, 2025, has already garnered support from over 50 technology partners including Atlassian, Box, Cohere, Intuit, LangChain, MongoDB, PayPal, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow and Workday.
Solving the Enterprise Integration Challenge
As enterprises increasingly deploy autonomous agents to automate workflows and enhance productivity, the need for these agents to communicate across siloed systems has become critical.
The A2A protocol addresses this challenge by establishing a standardized framework for secure agent collaboration, allowing AI agents to exchange information and coordinate actions across various platforms and applications.
Five Guiding Design Principles
Google Cloud designed A2A based on five key principles: Embracing natural agentic capabilities, building on existing standards like HTTP and JSON-RPC, implementing enterprise-grade security by default, supporting long-running tasks, and remaining modality-agnostic to handle various data types, including text, audio, and video streaming.
How A2A Works in Practice
At its core, A2A facilitates communication between “client” agents formulating tasks and “remote” agents executing them.
The protocol enables four critical capabilities: Capability discovery through “Agent Cards” in JSON format, task management with defined lifecycle states, agent-to-agent collaboration via context and instruction sharing, and user experience negotiation that adapts to different UI capabilities.
Transforming Complex Workflows
A practical example shared by Google Cloud illustrates how A2A might transform hiring processes. Within a unified interface, a hiring manager could task their agent with finding candidates matching specific criteria.
This primary agent would then collaborate with specialized remote agents to source candidates, schedule interviews, and even facilitate background checks, demonstrating how AI agents can work together across systems to streamline complex workflows.
Integration with Existing IT Infrastructure
Platform engineering teams should note A2A’s alignment with existing IT infrastructure.
The protocol leverages popular standards, including HTTP, SSE, and JSON-RPC, making integrating with existing technology stacks easier. This approach minimizes adoption barriers while maximizing interoperability benefits.
Industry Reception and Partner Support
Industry reception has been overwhelmingly positive. Brendan Haire, VP of Engineering at Atlassian, noted that A2A will “help agents successfully discover, coordinate, and reason with one another to enable richer forms of delegation and collaboration at scale.”
Intuit’s Tapasvi Moturu, VP of Software Engineering for Agentic Frameworks, added that the protocol will “enable complex agent workflows, accelerate partner integrations, and move the industry forward with cross-platform agents that collaborate effectively.”
“The announcement of Agent2Agent Protocol couldn’t be more timely, following on the heels of MCP’s rapid adoption,” said Mitch Ashley, VP and practice lead, DevOps and application development at Futurum. “Agents will be significantly limited in their capacity to perform tasks across service and vendor boundaries. Like MCP, A2A builds on the same widely used protocols, allowing agents to collaborate over short and long-running tasks, discover agent capabilities, share and update state, and operate agnostic to modality. I’m looking for Microsoft, AWS and AI LLM model companies to contribute to this open protocol.”
Implications for Platform Engineering
A2A represents a significant opportunity for platform engineers to design systems that leverage interconnected AI agents working across organizational boundaries.
Rather than building isolated automation solutions, teams can create ecosystems of specialized agents that communicate seamlessly, potentially transforming how enterprises approach automation and digital transformation initiatives.
Next Steps and Availability
Google Cloud is releasing the protocol as open source with clear contribution pathways and is working with partners to launch a production-ready version later this year. The complete specification draft, code samples, and example scenarios are available on the A2A website.
As intelligent agents become central to enterprise operations, the A2A protocol marks a pivotal step toward realizing truly collaborative AI systems.
Platform engineering teams should begin exploring how this standardized approach to agent communication might unlock new possibilities for cross-functional automation and enhanced productivity across their organizations.