Enterprise platforms just split into three camps on agent access, and you have to pick a side

This is the most consequential architecture decision in enterprise software since cloud versus on-prem, and it happened quietly across three vendor announcements. PYMNTS connected the dots first.

SAP blocks. Its API Policy v4/2026, published in late April, prohibits using SAP APIs for "interaction or integration with (semi-)autonomous or generative AI systems that plan, select, or execute sequences of API calls," except through SAP-endorsed Joule Agents. Existing Copilot integrations with live SAP data are now potentially in breach (The Register). ServiceNow meters. Its Action Fabric is a mandatory tollgate that external agents must pass through, priced per action, with Claude Cowork as launch partner. JPMorgan called it "effectively a tax on customers using outside AI agents." Salesforce opens. Summer '26, shipping June 15, runs multi-agent orchestration over MCP and Agent2Agent standards, with Agentforce already at $800M ARR (Salesforce).

Bain frames the prize behind all this: a $100B cross-system labor market where agents automate coordination work across ERP, CRM, billing, and support. Current vendors capture $4-6B. Over 90% is untapped (Bain).

The opinion that matters here is that the access model, not the agent quality, will decide what you can build. If your product's value depends on an agent autonomously reading and writing SAP data, you are now building on sand. SAP can revoke that at the policy layer and there's no engineering workaround. ServiceNow won't revoke it, but every action your agent takes now has a price, and that price is set by someone whose incentive is to make outside agents expensive relative to their own.

Builder advice: treat enterprise data access as a first-class risk, not an integration detail. Before you commit an architecture, map every system of record your agent touches to its camp. Block, meter, or open. Design for the most restrictive one in your dependency graph, because that's the one that breaks you. And if you can, build on the open side. MCP and A2A are the standards with a future precisely because they don't depend on one vendor's mood.