The SaaS reckoning: Why AI is about to reprice enterprise software

For most of my career, the enterprise software conversation followed a predictable script. A CRM, an ITSM platform, an ERP system, these were not things you built. They were things you bought, implemented and lived with. The reasoning was sound: Building them required enormous capital, long engineering tenures and specialized domain depth that only a handful of vendors could concentrate. So, enterprises paid the toll. And if you have ever read a SaaS earnings report, you know what that toll looks like on the margin line. That calculus is breaking down. Not collapsing overnight but breaking down in a way that every CIO I speak with is starting to quietly acknowledge. The reason is simple. AI has fundamentally changed the economics of writing software, and with it, the central premise of the enterprise SaaS model. The moat was never the code Here is the uncomfortable truth the last 24 months have surfaced: Most enterprise platforms are not technological marvels. An ERP, stripped to its e