Software is Dead (not)

A 2001 picture of Salesforce founder Marc Benioff feels very relevant. The rather indiscriminate "saaspocalypse" and its modern prophets of software doom should remember that back in 2001, according to Benioff, software was DEAD.

So either it has been dead for 25 years or it came back to life or, more to the point, it never disappeared. Marc had a point back then: not that software was really dead (remember that he is a great marketer), but that the traditional model of how software was delivered, experienced and priced could not survive. Buying software, installing it on servers, and managing it? NO MORE!! It was replaced by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where applications are delivered over the internet, eliminating the need for complex infrastructure. The "No Software" campaign helped pivot the industry toward cloud computing

As the quintessential SaaS company, Salesforce needs to adapt to the new reality: software is not dead, SaaS is probably not really dead, but the ways in which software is developed, packaged, delivered, experienced and priced are changing drastically and rapidly. I am not expecting Salesforce to begin a "SaaS is Dead" campaign (although it was fun making the picture) but it is definitely working toward a more "agents-as-a-service" attack line where AI agents take over work previously done by humans. Agentforce is the tip of spear.

AaaS does not sound great as an acronym. Perhaps that's why Salesforce signaling has been somewhat "half-AaaSsed", basically declaring that the new (undead Software) stack is defined as "AI + Data + CRM." If it wants to succeed, the company will have to fully embrace the new orchestration paradigm.