Alkira has released a model context protocol (MCP) server as part of its Network Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform.

The Alkira MCP Server is integrated into the vendor's Cloud Services Exchange (CSX) through secure API and authentication controls, alongside Alkira NIA (Network Infrastructure Assistant), an AI copilot that streamlines network operations through natural-language interaction.

Using MCP-compliant AI models such as Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini, the vendor’s unified control plane intelligence can be accessed without custom integration. Network teams have the potential to perform queries, validation, and actions across a distributed fabric without requiring extra hardware, agents, or structural changes to the network as the AI footprint evolves.

Potential network use cases highlighted by Alkira include rapid incident triage, continuous performance and security monitoring, on-demand compliance reporting, and real-time configuration explanation, policy validation, and safe optimization.

“Operations teams need precision, not more interfaces,” said Atif Khan, chief technology officer at Alkira. “Alkira MCP and Alkira NIA let engineers ask the network a question, check policy, and apply a change in one governed flow, all auditable end-to-end.”

More on MCP

Released late last year by AI firm Anthropic, MCP is an open standard designed to standardize the way AI systems, particularly large language models (LLMs), integrate and communicate with external data sources, tools, and systems.

As recently explored by SDxCentral, the protocol has the potential to aid networking and security teams in handling downstream effects, mainly around governance and traffic flow. LF Networking (LFN), for example, released this summer a modular, open-source framework aimed at advancing the integration of AI into networking applications, supporting MCP.

Experts from Sysdig and SnapLogic explained to SDxCentral that with the protocol still being immature, MCP lacks some critical enterprise security requirements, and will always require safety guards to prevent the wrong network action being taken by an agent.

Recent Forrester research has described MCP as an emerging surface for exploitation, with an email malware discovered this week described as the first real-world malicious MCP server.