SaaS sold seats. Agents sell completed work — and that changes everything from architecture to pricing. This session walks through the platform shift MCP is enabling, what an enterprise-grade MCP app actually looks like (auth, OpenFGA, observability, guardrails, governance), and how to monetize software that now has real cost of goods. A practical look at building, securing, and pricing for the agent era — for teams who’d rather lead the shift than catch up.
Key takeaways:
1. The primitive has shifted again. Every era has one — files, pages, apps, APIs. In the agent era it’s tools + context + reasoning, and MCP is the connector. Building anything else now is building for the last era.
2. MCP collapses N×M into N+M. Without a standard, every model-to-tool integration is bespoke; with one, the ecosystem compounds. The teams that adopt the protocol early capture the leverage; latecomers rebuild what they should have inherited.
3. The app stops being generic. Next-gen MCP apps aren’t built for the average user. They reshape themselves around one user, one role, one task, and the data that user is authorized to see. The UI becomes the model, not the form.
4. Enterprise-grade goes well beyond auth. Identity, authorization (OpenFGA), observability, guardrails, data governance, and cost controls — the whole stack has to be in place. Miss any one of them and the deal stalls in procurement.
5. Pricing and margin must be redesigned. SaaS sold seats; agents sell completed work. But MCP apps have real COGS — tokens, tool calls, infra — so 85% SaaS-era margins don’t survive untouched. Design the pricing model and the unit economics in from day one, not as an afterthought.
- Date:30/05/2026
- Time:11:15
- Event:From People to Platforms: AI, Identity, and Cybersecurity Across Apps & Cloud @Bengaluru
