I recently delivered a keynote session at the European Power Platform Conference (EPPC) in Copenhagen, and of course, AI was one of the most prominent discussion topics. It was the subject of my session too, but rather than highlighting a use case or exploring a technology roadmap, I focused instead on the wider, and often less considered, implications of the rapid advances in AI.
At the heart of this is the idea that AI is not just another technology shift – because it’s moving into the delivery of real human work. That creates a risk for organisations and individuals alike. Many are still treating AI as another technology programme – something to assess, pilot and gradually incorporate into an existing strategy.
But AI is already undermining some of the assumptions on which those strategies were built: how software is bought, how work is organised, where competitive advantage comes from, and which professional skills remain valuable.
The danger is not necessarily that every business or role disappears. It is that organisations and people sleepwalk into a world in which their existing strategy has become steadily less relevant – and only recognise the change once competitors, customers or colleagues have moved ahead.
The technology shifts we know, and why this one feels different
If you look back over the last 20 or 30 years, the major shifts are easy to name. The internet changed how we discovered information. Mobile phones put computing power into pockets. Cloud changed how systems were delivered and scaled. SaaS reinvented how organisations bought and used software.
But AI is different. It can discern, summarise, analyse and create, working as embedded agents that function as genuine digital workers. Agents are already taking on human-owned tasks, and the gap is closing. As I highlighted in my keynote, analysis from GDPVal, which assesses AI models against human outputs, shows that AI is already capable of performing 83% of the 220 assessed tasks at an industry-expert level.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that AI is ready to replace every role or run every process. Equally, the retention of a human in the loop is still a critical requirement for even the most finely-tuned agentic AI framework.
AI also hasn’t led to the business change many were anticipating – at least not yet. In the 1930s, economist J.M. Keynes predicted that technology advances would have shrunk the workweek to 15 hours per week by now. Not even today’s AI has enabled that – most professionals are working harder than ever. The impact is more nuanced than a simple productivity calculation. AI is beginning to change strategy, culture, customer expectations, software economics and the nature of professional value. Understanding those consequences is now as important as understanding the technology itself.
The SaaS-pocalypse and AI era impact in action
One of the clearest signs of AI’s seismic impact is seen in the recent “SaaS-pocalypse” financial markets event. Following the launch of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork alongside its 11 industry-specific agentic plugins, and OpenAI’s Frontier agent, several major software vendors saw their market value reduce drastically. $285 billion of value was lost in 48 hours. While many of those impacted have now experienced some recovery, it was an unprecedented market drop. The immediate concern was simple: if an agent can complete the work, how many people still need to operate the software? Fewer people entering data, moving between screens and progressing workflows could mean fewer licences – putting pressure on the per-seat SaaS model.
This may have come as a surprise to some, but from an Advania perspective, organisations have already been asking us whether they needed to buy another standalone product, or if there is an alternative. Historically, SaaS often won because it was the quickest route to a working capability; but each additional application brings challenges in integration, security, compliance and fragmentation – with organisations also tiring of the sheer friction in onboarding yet another vendor.
AI is now presenting a credible alternative through agents which are part of the existing enterprise technology stack (e.g. Microsoft 365) and can work across data sources easily and be tailored to specific needs. As explored in our Build vs buy: how AI agents stand up as a business SaaS alternative article, organisations do not necessarily face a choice between a rigid product and an expensive build from scratch.
At Advania, we use reusable agent foundations to accelerate delivery, then tailor the capability around the customer. One production example involves a customer saving more than 400 person-days per year from the RFP Agent we tailored to their data and processes.
The question is changing from “Which SaaS product should we buy?” to “What is the best way to deliver this outcome – a product, a tailored agent or both?”
Even the world’s biggest names are not immune. Microsoft has faced similar pressures, including in areas of particular relevance for those who joined me at EPPC. With the growing popularity of self-taught vibe coding, what is the future for developers creating Power Apps in Microsoft Power Platform? Tools like Microsoft Dynamics are put at risk with the analytical and administrative workflow capability of agents, while the “SaaS-pocalypse” has already shown the threat to the long-standing per-seat licensing model.
What’s the big takeaway here? It’s that AI is not only disrupting new entrants and niche tools. It is redefining the systems people already trust. The change is happening now, and how organisations prepare and respond is critical.
What Microsoft’s response tells us
Clearly, as one of the world’s most prominent technology companies, Microsoft is well-insulated against these threats. It has a base of 3.7 million organisations using Microsoft 365, has taken hold of the identity market with Microsoft Entra, and holds huge amounts of valuable data from organisations across the globe. But that doesn’t mean it can ignore them, either.
It is not resisting change or sticking with what has gone before. It is bringing AI into the products themselves, deploying vibe coding inside tools like Power Platform, pushing Dynamics further towards more agent-native experiences, and preparing for a world where per-seat licensing sits alongside consumption-based models.
These are all direct responses to the AI challenge, but what makes them possible? It’s Microsoft’s strong combination of technical understanding and business impact awareness, the same combined knowledge base that organisations must build to stay ahead.
For business leaders, technical considerations around AI usage cannot be left solely to the experts within your organisation. You must understand, or at the very least appreciate, the practical realities of any deployments beyond the desired business change.
For IT and technical teams, building your own capability remains important, but not without true business context. You must understand how what you create or advocate is going to truly move the needle on what matters to your organisation – what you sell, how you do it, and where you are most profitable.
This will help you place better bets with your own AI investments, but it goes beyond internal implications alone. As with the Microsoft example, the contextualisation of AI technology around business impact helps you predict and respond to competitor changes, emerging challengers, and the behaviours of your customers.
The organisations and professionals who get this right are the ones who will extend their own moat, becoming increasingly valuable and resilient to change.
Staying ahead in the AI era
The biggest lesson from the keynote is simple. AI is changing the assumptions that have underpinned software, work and operating models for years.
That is where the Advania team can step in. We stay close to the changes, keeping ourselves at the forefront of AI innovation to help customers make sense of what this means in practice, before bringing together the technical expertise and strategic understanding needed to respond well.
For our customers, they move forward with the reassurance of working with a partner who is looking over the horizon with them, identifying the right AI use cases within their own business and building the foundations needed to move with confidence.
If you’re conscious of what this now means for your own organisation, Advania can help you connect the technical and strategic sides of that conversation to define your own response.
Get started by speaking with one of our experts.
If you’d like to watch my keynote session in full, a recording is available here.
