Software – Recap Gartner's "AI Disruption: What's Really Causing the SaaS Slowdown" Webinar; Our Own Stock Callouts Too

Research evidence excerpt

Software – Recap Gartner's "AI Disruption: What's Really Causing the SaaS Slowdown" Webinar; Our Own Stock Callouts Too

Truist Securities

Additionally, Gartner ranked areas of software that are ripe for AI agent replicability, using benchmarks such as business value and

economics, architectural defensibility, agentic risk and readiness, and task and technical feasibility. According to Gartner, tools like CRM

that holistically manage sales, service and marketing, Procure to Pay, and Marketing ranked the highest in replicability, and areas such

as Core Manufacturing, Financial Management, and Supply Chain Execution ranked among the most defensible. In our view, Gartner's

conclusions are mostly reasonable given that high impact and high cost of error solutions, such as Supply Chain Execution and Financial

Management, cannot afford errors from new entrants that lack the mileage of proven solutions. We would agree less on the rapid

replicability of front-office CRM platforms in the upper end of the enterprise market given the vast historical and current data context

these products provide, the likelihood of extensions that have expanded said CRM capabilities to unique business or industry workflows

over time and are difficult to remove/replace, etc.

Looking further ahead, Mr. Connaughton predicts the arrival of a true "Agentic Application Era" beyond 2030 and eventually the evolution

into a "headless" software environment by 2040. In this future state, he argues that the organizations controlling the underlying data layer

could emerge as the primary arbiters of value. While AI agents are expected to unlock significant new capabilities, he maintains that

this shift will likely increase the total cost of ownership rather than reduce it.