Son of a SaaS! AI Killed SaaS, Here’s What’s Next

Son of a SaaS! AI Killed SaaS, Here Is What’s Next Software Development: The Renaissance of the Domain Architect Software Architectures: Towards Objects with an Attitude Software Businesses: From Dashboards to Outcomes Introducing ODAS: The Future of Enterprise Tech Conclusion Software has changed forever—again. While the internet, virtualization, cloud, and containers were seismic shifts, they will soon seem like minor tremors compared to the coming inflection of Generative AI and its impact to the software industry. We are witnessing a massive boom, but it isn’t just a tech upgrade; it is the death of the seat-based, ticket-driven SaaS model as we know it. If the “Service-as-a-Software” or ”Vertical SaaS” variations on SaaS seem incremental – you are not alone. The coming change is bigger. To understand why the shift is far more profound, we must look at the fusion of software architecture and business models into a new breed of systems: the Outcome-Driven Agentic Software (ODAS). For decades, those of us creating software have known that the code itself was never the moat. The real value of software lies in knowing what code to write, how to package it, and — most importantly — understanding how it will be used. When I joined Motorola as a software engineer in the mid-90s, I wasn’t handed a keyboard and a Jira ticket. I was sent to mandatory domain training in wireless radio frequency (RF) technologies. This was the prerequisite for writing mission-critical software for cellular infrastructure. Sure, mastering C++ was important but the focus was on applying software engineering skills to solve high-stakes human problems within a domain.