Short answers to things people ask us

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard, introduced by Anthropic in 2024, for connecting AI assistants to other software. A system such as an ERP exposes its data and actions through an MCP server, and any assistant that supports MCP can then use them within the permissions it is given.

Yes. MCP connects an AI assistant to systems and data. A2A (Agent2Agent), an open protocol started by Google, lets an agent in one system pass work to an agent in another. "Skills" are packaged instructions that teach an assistant how to carry out a particular procedure.

An AI agent is software that uses a language model to work towards a goal in several steps. It decides what to do next, uses tools such as search, a database or an API, checks the result and continues. A chatbot answers a message; an agent carries out a task.

RAG stands for retrieval-augmented generation. Before the model answers, the system looks up relevant passages in your own documents or database and gives them to the model along with the question. The answer is then based on that material instead of only on what the model learned in training.

It means a person reviews or approves what an automated system does at chosen points. For example, an AI agent may prepare a purchase order, and a manager approves it before it is sent. It is used where a mistake would be costly or hard to undo.

An LLM (large language model) is an AI model trained on very large amounts of text to predict what comes next. That training lets it write, summarise, translate, answer questions and write code. GPT, Claude and Gemini are examples.

E-invoicing means issuing an invoice as structured data in a format set by the tax authority, not as paper or a PDF. In many countries the invoice is reported to, or cleared by, a government system when it is issued. India and Saudi Arabia already require it for many businesses.

Odoo Community is the free, open-source edition. Odoo Enterprise is the paid edition, licensed per user, which adds further apps and features such as Odoo Studio, plus official support and version upgrades. Both are built on the same core, so a company can start on Community and move to Enterprise.

A bill of materials (BOM) is the list of components, sub-assemblies and quantities needed to make one unit of a product. An ERP uses it to plan purchases, reserve stock, schedule production and work out the cost of the product.

MRO stands for maintenance, repair and overhaul: the work that keeps an aircraft airworthy. The term also covers the companies that do this work. An MRO system records every task, part and sign-off against the aircraft or component it belongs to.

A pre-engineered building (PEB) is a steel building that is designed to order, fabricated in a factory and bolted together on site. Warehouses, factories and hangars are often built this way. Because each order has its own design, the work is managed per project and not from a fixed product list.

Batch traceability is the ability to follow a batch of medicine in both directions: back to the raw-material lots and process records that went into it, and forward to where it was shipped. It is a requirement of good manufacturing practice, and it is what makes a quick, targeted recall possible.

Steve Wozniak designed and hand-built the Apple I in 1976. Steve Jobs proposed selling it, and Apple was founded that year. The Apple I was sold as an assembled circuit board; buyers added their own case, keyboard and display.

Engineers used "bug" for a fault in a machine long before computers; Thomas Edison used the word in the 1870s. The well-known story is from 1947, when operators of the Harvard Mark II found a moth in a relay and taped it into the logbook. That made the word famous, but it is not where it began.

There is no single first ERP. The term "enterprise resource planning" was coined by the research firm Gartner in 1990. ERP grew out of the material requirements planning (MRP) systems of the 1960s and 1970s, which planned materials for manufacturing and were later extended to finance, sales and the rest of the business.

Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN, proposed the World Wide Web in 1989 and built the first web server and browser in 1990. The web is a service that runs on the internet, which is older. CERN released the web software into the public domain in 1993.

Network engineers drew a cloud shape on diagrams to stand for a network whose inner details did not matter, such as the telephone network or the internet. When computing and storage began to be delivered over the internet, the name carried over: your data and software sit somewhere inside that cloud.

Before the iPhone, phones could already download apps and games from mobile operators' own portals, so there is no single first. Apple's App Store opened in July 2008 with about 500 apps and made the app store a standard part of a smartphone. Android Market, now Google Play, followed in October 2008.