Argument — the bigger case.
The ServiceNow argument got attention. But ServiceNow was never really the point.
The more interesting question is what happens when an application no longer owns the user.
Enterprise work does not actually respect application boundaries. A customer problem may touch Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, email, Slack, a data platform, a contract, and a person.
The old software architecture forced the human to become the integration layer.
- We logged into one system.
- Found the information.
- Moved to another.
- Interpreted the context.
- Updated something.
- Sent a message.
- Opened another record.
The workflow was technically distributed but cognitively assembled by a person.
AI changes that. An intelligence layer can increasingly assemble context across those systems and coordinate the execution itself.
That means workflow begins escaping the application. And when it does, the platform battle moves upstream.
The question becomes:
- Who owns the context?
- Who understands the policy?
- Who knows the desired state?
- Who decides what happens next?
- Who has permission to make it happen?
- Who maintains authoritative state?
- Who can prove what happened afterward?
This is why I do not think the future is simply AI replacing SaaS. That is too crude. The systems underneath the enterprise remain essential. But their strategic role can change.
- A system of record can be immensely valuable without being the primary interface.
- A transaction engine can be indispensable without determining the workflow.
- An application can survive while its old moat disappears.
For decades we built systems of record. Then systems of engagement.
I think the next fight is over systems of execution. And this time, the boundary may not be an application at all.
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Written by Jason Wojahn. AIorDie is a personal publication about what breaks when software starts doing the work.
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