Lesson 1 of 6
Agents need a front door
11 min
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An AI agent that can only talk is a chatbot. An agent that can call your systems is a new kind of integration partner: it reads a request in plain language, decides which operations to call, calls them in sequence and acts on the answers. For an SAP landscape that raises two questions at once. How does the agent find and call SAP functions in a standard way? And who controls what it may call, how often, and as whom? This course answers both for the MCP Gateway in SAP Integration Suite, the capability SAP now positions as the governed entry point for agents.
What MCP is
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol for connecting AI applications to tools and data. It uses JSON-RPC 2.0 messages between three roles. The host is the AI application the user works in. Inside it, an MCP client holds the connection to one server. The MCP server offers capabilities. A server can offer three kinds of primitive: tools (functions the model can call, such as "get sales order status"), resources (data the agent can read as context, identified by URIs) and prompts (reusable message templates). Remote servers are reached over the Streamable HTTP transport, and the specification's authorization model is based on OAuth.
Two details matter for integration teams. First, the specification itself is moving fast: SAP's documentation for Integration Suite currently lists support for MCP specification versions 2025-11-25 (stateful, with an initialize handshake and an Mcp-Session-Id) and 2026-07-28 (a stateless, per-request model). Second, the specification is explicit that tool descriptions supplied by a server are untrusted unless the server is trusted, and that hosts must get the user's consent before invoking tools. A gateway that you control is how the server side becomes trustworthy.
Why SAP cares: the API Policy
SAP publishes an SAP API Policy as part of the documentation for its solutions. The version current at the time of writing is v.4.2026a. Three parts of it shape agent designs:
- Section 1 separates Published APIs (on the SAP Business Accelerator Hub or in product documentation) from non-published ones. Customer and third-party applications must not call non-published APIs, with exceptions the policy names, such as custom-developed ABAP interfaces in private cloud and on-premise deployments.
- Section 2.2.2 prohibits API use for interaction with (semi-)autonomous or generative AI systems "that plan, select, or execute sequences of API calls", and for large-scale scraping or extraction, except through SAP-endorsed architectures, data services or service-specific pathways intended for the purpose.
- Section 3 says SAP may monitor and enforce, and that API controls must not be circumvented through intermediary services, proxies, gateways or similar mechanisms.
Read section 3 next to 2.2.2. A home-grown gateway in front of S/4HANA does not turn an unendorsed pattern into an endorsed one. What changes the picture is using a pathway SAP itself identifies for the purpose. SAP's July 2026 Integration Suite update presents the MCP Gateway as that pathway: external third-party agents and customer-managed agents on SAP BTP should use it to access SAP systems. SAP Architecture Center guidance on third-party MCP access adds that the API Policy must be adhered to in full in any case. This course teaches patterns, not legal conclusions: whether a specific design complies is a question for your SAP contract team and counsel, and the policy text is versioned, so check the current one.
- Does the agent call only Published APIs?Yes → next question · No → redesign; non-published APIs are out of bounds for applications
- Does an AI system plan or execute sequences of those calls?Yes → it needs an SAP-endorsed pathway · No → normal Documented Use rules apply
- Does the call path run through a pathway SAP identifies for agents, such as the MCP Gateway?Yes → design within that pathway's limits · No → do not ship; a custom proxy does not change the answer
- Has the contract team confirmed the design against the current policy version?Yes → record the version and date · No → get the review before go-live
Availability: what is GA today
Be precise here, because the catalog of agent features changes monthly. The facts as of October 2026:
| Capability | Status (October 2026) | Where it is stated |
|---|---|---|
| MCP Gateway: MCP servers as artifacts on the Integration Cell runtime | Generally available since July 5, 2026 (What's New entry "Expose Enterprise APIs to AI Agents with the MCP Gateway") | What's New for SAP API Management, Cloud Foundry |
| MCP servers from API artifacts, HTTP endpoints with OpenAPI, RFC backends | Generally available; feature availability depends on your service plan (SAP Note 2903776) and Integration Cell region (SAP Note 3769634) | SAP Help Portal: Creating an MCP Server |
| Principal propagation for on-premise MCP server flows | Generally available since July 26, 2026 | What's New |
| Remote MCP servers as a source (proxying a third-party MCP server) | Generally available since September 20, 2026 | What's New |
| Composing one MCP server across several APIs; AI Gateway for agent-to-LLM calls; monetizing tools; an autonomous agent step in API artifacts | Roadmap; the AI Gateway is planned for Q4 2026 | SAP Integration Suite monthly updates, May and July 2026 |
| Agent Gateway (agent-to-agent, A2A) | Not yet generally available | SAP Architecture Center |
Status as researched on October 17, 2026. Re-verify in What's New and the SAP Road Map Explorer before any design decision. "Agent Gateway" here means the inbound A2A entry point for external agents; the Joule Studio glossary uses the same name for the governed layer through which deployed agents reach SAP back ends as MCP tools.
What would you do?
Grace, the PMO lead, reads a vendor blog saying Contoso's agents can call any S/4HANA OData service "as long as they go through a gateway". Theo is asked to confirm before a pilot starts. What should he say?
- MCP connects AI hosts and clients to servers that expose tools, resources and prompts over JSON-RPC 2.0.
- SAP API Policy v.4.2026a section 2.2.2 restricts AI systems that plan or execute API call sequences to SAP-endorsed pathways; section 3 rules out circumvention via gateways.
- SAP presents the MCP Gateway in Integration Suite as the endorsed pathway; it has been generally available since July 5, 2026, subject to service plan and region.
- Composition across APIs, the AI Gateway and the A2A Agent Gateway are roadmap or not yet GA: design without them.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which MCP primitive is meant for actions the model can invoke, such as reading an order's status?
2. What does section 3 of the SAP API Policy add to the agent question?
3. As of October 2026, what is the status of the MCP Gateway's ability to compose one MCP server from several API artifacts?
4. Why does a gateway you control make server-side tool descriptions more trustworthy?