When intelligent systems can’t communicate, progress stalls.

Across many organizations, AI agents are stepping in to handle task procurement approvals, IT requests, talent sourcing, and more. But despite their growing presence, these agents remain fragmented, each working in isolation. The result? Missed opportunities for coordination, duplication of effort, and limited value.

That changes with the arrival of Agent2Agent (A2A), a newly launched open protocol backed by Google Cloud and a formidable alliance of over 50 industry leaders including SAP, Salesforce, Intuit, LangChain, MongoDB, Accenture, and Deloitte. A2A introduces a universal protocol designed to help agents work together regardless of who built them, where they’re hosted, or what systems they’re tied to. It’s a decisive move toward a future where intelligent agents don’t just automate tasks they collaborate to get them done smarter.

At its core, A2A is a framework that allows AI agents built on different systems, by different teams to securely exchange information, coordinate actions, and complete tasks together.

This is not about flashy demos. It’s about making agentic systems usable, interoperable, and practical for the complexity of real work.

Why A2A Matters

Across many organizations, AI agents are already being deployed to handle support tickets, assist with onboarding, monitor systems, or make procurement decisions. But these agents are usually locked into their own silos, unable to coordinate or share context with others.

A2A introduces a common way for agents to:

1. Discover each other's capabilities
2. Initiate and manage tasks
3. Share updates and results
4. Adjust output formats based on user interface constraints
5. Support both short and long-running tasks from a quick lookup to multi-hour research involving several steps

And because it’s built using reliable, proven standards like HTTP and JSON-RPC, A2A can be folded into existing enterprise environments without rewriting everything from scratch.

Designed for the Way Work Actually Happens

Take hiring, for example. A manager could ask one agent to find qualified candidates. That agent, in turn, could delegate to a network of other agents, some scanning resumes, others handling interview scheduling, and one managing background checks. Each agent contributes its part, without the manager needing to jump between platforms or re-enter information.

This type of coordinated delegation is where A2A shines. It’s not flashy it’s functional. It handles the handoffs, tracks the progress, and allows agents to adapt to users’ preferences along the way. Whether you need a form filled out or a video generated, A2A helps agents deliver the output in the right format at the right time.

Built by a Broad Alliance, Not in a Vacuum

Perhaps the most remarkable part of A2A is the depth and variety of its contributors. This isn’t a closed standard. It’s being shaped in public by cloud providers, enterprise software leaders, engineering platforms, and consulting firms each with a stake in making AI agents more useful and compatible.

The Mechanics: Clean, Secure, Flexible

A2A communication revolves around two roles: a client agent that initiates a task and a remote agent that helps complete it. Agents publish what they can do via standardized “Agent Cards.” They communicate through structured messages, exchange artifacts (outputs), and keep one another updated on task status.

Each message is precise containing content parts, instructions, and interface details. This precision makes the protocol suitable for secure, high-stakes environments, whether you’re routing a document approval or analyzing financial records.

Importantly, A2A also doesn’t assume every agent is a chatbot. It’s built to support audio, video, forms, and more making it a flexible foundation for richer types of collaboration.

The protocol is open source. It’s the kind of collaboration protocol that doesn’t just connect systems it unlocks real productivity. Not by reinventing what agents can do, but by finally letting them do it together.

To review the full specification, contribute ideas, or try the protocol in your stack, visit the official A2A Protocol site.