'Software Isn't Dead, But Its Cosy Business Model Might Be' (ft.com)
- Reference: 0180810636
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/02/17/1445232/software-isnt-dead-but-its-cosy-business-model-might-be
- Source link: https://www.ft.com/content/8784de75-861f-4460-b8c3-6937f626dbd1
As autonomous agents take on tasks that human workers once handled, the per-seat pricing model that made SaaS revenue so predictable is giving way to consumption-based and hybrid alternatives. Snowflake and Databricks (valued at $134 billion) already charge based on usage. Salesforce initially priced its Agentforce customer relations bot at $2 per conversation but faced customer pushback and now offers action-based pricing, upfront credits and fixed fees.
ServiceNow's finance chief Amit Zavery said last month that some customers aren't ready for purely consumption-based models. Goldman Sachs estimates US software spending will nearly triple to $2.8 trillion by 2037 as automated tasks blur the boundary between IT and wage budgets, but that money will no longer arrive in the neat recurring instalments that investors and private equity firms have come to expect.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/8784de75-861f-4460-b8c3-6937f626dbd1
Lol, what? (Score:5, Informative)
> AI agents don't sit in chairs, and they don't need licences.
Yeah, right. I don't think so. If it is using the software, it is going to need a license. Multiple agents, multiple licenses. It's not hard.
Re: Lol, what? (Score:2)
I know when the company i rework for bikes by seat, it was about the user's who benefit. That said, my company transitioned to usage based a few years back and a lot of the industry assumed to be moving that way well before the agentic buzz
Re: (Score:3)
In many cases it's "multiple copies running" and that's been a thing for decades. Each agent is going to need another copy running any time it's using the software. If you want to have all the agents queue up all of their requests and then have a single worker process serve all of them then you might reduce the number of licenses used, but it won't necessarily reduce them to 1 depending on the load. And this sort of thing has already long been done, with workers in specific rules doing all of a certain type
Re: (Score:2)
But what is "using the software" actually? A human fires up a shell, may it be a command line or a graphic user interface. And it enters commands and mouse actions at a human speed. The AI doesn't need neither. And even if it does, it can do many more commands or mouse actions than a human ever could. In fact, an AI can max out the information channel to the software, which humans normally can't.
False premise... (Score:2)
"AI agents don't sit in chairs, and they don't need licences."
I wouldn't be surprised if the juiciest days of SaaS rent seeking are behind us(if nothing else, SaaS vendor numbers were starting to look less promising prior to the 'AI' craze; arguably one of the reasons why they all jumped on it like rabid animals hoping that it would salvage their growth); but this premise seems deeply and obviously flawed. Per-seat licensing has never involved chairs; and (especially when you are dealing with software co
Who wrote this article? (Score:2)
A CEO who's woken up to the realisation that all this useless AI costs heaps of money for even the simplest of tasks?
Sounds like the only reason why this article was written was to cosy up the public to pay more soon.
The AI investment pond must be drying up very quickly out there, with sheer desperation for any returns.
What tasks? (Score:2)
I want one article that states clearly and unambiguously what tasks Ai is replacing human workers on.
Slashdot is what is dead (Score:1)
Yet another paywalled article and there is nothing of substance to actually discuss here. Someone has an opinion, who, god knows, subscribe to find out. I am done with this site.
Re: (Score:3)
The fact that they were charging $2/conversation is interesting. My Eliza Bot could very slowly bankrupt them.
Re: (Score:2)
$2 per conversation is INSANE.
I hope these are the most insightful, life changing conversation.
Cause I used the chat bot of a subscription service yesterday and it's so bad I decided to call and wait 2 hours on the phone instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly the paywalled article business model is dead.