DailyPost 3018
THE END OF APPS
With the advent of AI, the most important question in everyone’s mind is to try and fathom out the future of the software. Software has become synonymous with IT, cyber, business operations and our very existence in the present day world. It is valued for its contribution for ushering mankind to this stage. Software industry is on the brink of a monumental shift. Business applications as we know then and more so Software-as-a-Service may soon collapse in favour of intelligent AI agents is the prediction of no other than Satya Nadella, in a recent podcast. He is of the opinion that rapidly evolving AI could absorb or replace the core logic of modern apps.
What does the modern app or software perform? The software / app primarily undertakes four business operations; create, read, update and delete, for managing data in a database. This applies to all solutions from CRM to spreadsheets. What made each different was the business logic; the specific rules in the way data is processed, updated or displayed. The traditional business logic also relies on specialised UI, to help navigate the software / app in the most useful manner. Satya Nadella says in future all these roles will migrate to the AI tier. AI agents can coordinate and work with multiple backends. The data interaction thus becomes universal.
Data can be fetched from one database and updated into another without relying on separate UI layers or separate apps. Microsoft is pushing Dynamics in that direction. Products would collapse into creating agent based solutions. It becomes a container of data, it would mean the end of individual applications. It marked a departure from conventional SaaS thinking. The creation of AI native backends is the task ahead, so that AI agents can orchestrate tasks. Getting the relevant data and triggering correct business operations would be the task of AI. AI would handle multiple repositories at once.
It would also mean the end of spreadsheets? Nadella asks, why do I even need excel? AI agents would do the advanced data analysis and churn out charts and tables at user requests. It would also provide visualisation on demand. Excel then becomes just a scratchpad for the AI. It can create independent analysis pipelines, unheard of today. Agentic workflow is the future. Intelligent AI Agents centralises intelligence, and it does everything for the user. How will security be managed? User interface might become ephemeral, just a prompt will serve the purpose. The concept of a static interface might also disappear. Developers may end up doing frontends, data strategy and AI training. New jobs would evolve around directing, refining and policing AI behaviour.
A BOLD, BRAVE AND AUDACIOUS AI WORLD AWAITS US, LITERALLY BREAKING EVERY DIGITAL CEILING.
Sanjay Sahay