Vacation SaaS
"...we're not witnessing death, we're watching evolution under enterprise constraints'
I have been thinking about the future of Enterprise SaaS this week (fun vacation thoughts, right….) The Forbes take on SaaS dying misses the bigger story, which Aaron Levie captures perfectly in his Box interview: we're not witnessing death, we're watching evolution under enterprise constraints. When 42% of AI projects fail due to poor data readiness, as that Fivetran report shows, the problem isn't that SaaS companies are obsolete—it's that they're finally being forced to deliver what they always promised.
Puutio argues that outcomes matter more than tools, and he's right, but he's describing maturation, not replacement. The same forces that drove the cloud transition are driving this AI transition, just faster. Companies want results, not complexity. They want predictable value, not endless configuration. The difference now is that AI actually makes this possible at scale, which is why everyone from Zendesk to Amplitude is rebuilding their offerings around agentic delivery.
What I find compelling about Levie's perspective is his emphasis on API-first architecture as the bridge. When he says AI agents are "perfect consumers of an API," he's identifying why incumbents have a real shot at this transition. The infrastructure layer doesn't need to be rebuilt—it needs to be abstracted away. ServiceNow doesn't disappear; it becomes the engine that AI agents use to actually resolve tickets end-to-end.
The speed mismatch between technological capability and organizational adoption creates the opportunity. While startups chase the pure AI-native play, established SaaS companies can offer something more valuable: predictable outcomes built on proven infrastructure. Enterprises trust gradual enhancement more than revolutionary replacement, especially when the stakes involve core business processes.
This isn't about SaaS companies becoming consulting firms. It's about them finally becoming what customers thought they were buying all along: solutions that solve problems instead of tools that create new ones.
Alexander Puutio
