The next generation of business intelligence: Large language models, model context protocol, and enterprise Bedrock

In late 2024, Anthropic released the “Model Context Protocol” (MCP) which allows users and developers to directly integrate frontier AI models with existing data and software tools. MCP is an open-standard protocol that is now being used with leading edge large language models to help with business intelligence. This case drills down on how AI is now integrated into BI software and on the use of the MCP in two settings: at the individual and at the enterprise level. Its use is illustrated on a sample problem. Although there are benefits with the integration of AI and BI, AI usage introduces other sources of costs, risks, and organizational effects that need to be examined. This case also provides the opportunity to investigate these and other issues in the context of BI software in a cloud computing setting. This case is based on field research and aimed at advanced undergraduates, graduate students, or executives in analysis of data and analytics or artificial intelligence issues.