As AI lowers the cost of creating software, enterprises will shift how they buy, build, and manage applications. The crucial challenge will be who owns and operates the growing number of generated capabilities.
AI will make software creation easier and faster, but that does not eliminate the role of packaged SaaS or require every enterprise to build everything.
Expect a clearer split between the core (trusted systems and records) and the edge (experiences, workflows, channels, and agents) with the edge evolving much more quickly.
Creation capacity increases will raise the importance of stewardship: ownership, security, operation, funding, measurement, evolution, and retirement of capabilities.
The Forrester piece lays out how AI-driven abundance in software creation will change enterprise software economics and organizational responsibilities. For decades enterprises have obtained software by buying, customizing, or building. AI changes the relative cost and speed of those options, but it doesn't make them irrelevant. The practical effect will be a faster rate of change at the edge of the application estate, and sustained deliberation around what lives in the core.
Think of enterprise software as two zones. The core holds trusted systems and records that the business depends on. These must evolve deliberately because mistakes there affect accuracy, compliance, and operational stability. The edge includes customer and employee experiences, custom workflows, integrations, and agentic interfaces. The edge is where business outcomes and experimentation happen, so it will move faster as AI reduces creation friction.
AI-powered agents are already entering stages of design, coding, testing, and delivery. As they scale, enterprises will produce more applications, integrations, automations, and agents. That increased capacity will enable new workflows and faster iteration cycles, particularly at the edge. But higher production volume is not the same as higher business value.
Stewardship becomes the scarce resource
The authors' central insight is that when creation becomes abundant, stewardship becomes scarce. Every generated capability still needs an owner who will secure it, operate it, fund it, measure its value, evolve it, and retire it when appropriate. The costs and responsibilities of stewardship may not decline as quickly as creation costs, so organizations that fail to assign clear ownership and governance will face sprawl and technical debt.
Operational and governance implications
Enterprises will need clearer architectural boundaries and governance models that distinguish what belongs in the core versus the edge. Operating models must adapt to manage a larger, faster-changing set of capabilities. That includes lifecycle stewardship, security posture, compliance controls, funding decisions, and metrics tied to business outcomes rather than lines of code or number of agents deployed.
The article stresses that this is not a prophecy of SaaS's death. Packaged applications will continue to serve important roles, especially for core systems. Not every enterprise will or should build every application internally. The outcome will be nuanced: more generated solutions at the edge combined with deliberate evolution of core systems.
Forrester intends to develop the idea further in conference presentations and advisory sessions. The practical next steps for leaders include reassessing ownership models, defining core/edge boundaries, and creating governance that channels creation into measurable business value instead of sprawl.
Bottom line: AI expands what's possible to build quickly. The harder problem is deciding which of those possibilities should be kept, run, funded, and improved over time.
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