Microsoft VP: SaaS Isn’t Dying. It’s Entering Its Next Act and AI Agents Are the Catalyst
Across industries, companies are moving from AI pilots to real deployments and seeing measurable results. Teams are generating insights, completing research, and drafting work in a fraction of the time. What took months can now take days — what took days can now take minutes.
TL;DR
- AI pilots are moving to deployment, showing significant time savings in tasks like research and drafting.
- Productivity gains from AI don't automatically lead to business transformation due to unchanged workflows.
- Organizations still rely on people to connect information between different software systems (people as middleware).
- The "toggle tax" of switching between applications consumes significant employee time.
- AI agents can eliminate this "toggle tax" by accessing data across systems.
- SaaS is evolving from user interfaces to systems that provide context and security for AI agents.
- By 2028, a significant portion of enterprise software will include agentic AI.
- Transformative AI gains require leadership alignment and redesigning work processes.
- Organizations should start by improving workflows that cut across multiple applications.
- As agents become more capable, redesigning workflows around them will be key for maximum impact, freeing people for higher-level tasks.