Agentic-Native Platforms Are Creating A New Technology Business Model
For decades, the enterprise technology industry operated on a simple principle: software companies built products, and services firms helped enterprises.
- Agentic-native platforms combine software products with autonomous AI agents that can execute tasks such as IT incident resolution, customer service triage, and supply chain optimization without human intervention, compressing service delivery timelines by up to 60% in early enterprise pilots.
- Salesforce's Agentforce and ServiceNow's Now Assist are two leading examples, both launched in 2024, with Salesforce reporting over 2,000 enterprise customers using agentic workflows within the first two quarters of deployment.
- A 2025 Gartner report predicts that by 2027, 40% of large enterprises will adopt at least one agentic-native platform for core business processes, up from less than 5% in 2024.
- The new business model shifts revenue from per-seat SaaS subscriptions to outcome-based pricing, where customers pay per task completed or per business outcome achieved, altering unit economics for software vendors.
- Traditional systems integrators like Accenture and Deloitte are investing heavily in agentic orchestration layers, with Accenture acquiring five AI-agent startups in 2025 alone to maintain relevance in the evolving landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions
Agentic-native platforms are enterprise software systems that embed AI agents capable of autonomously executing business processes, such as resolving IT tickets, managing customer inquiries, or optimizing supply chains. Unlike traditional SaaS, these platforms blur the line between product and service by delivering outcomes without human intervention.
They shift revenue from per-seat subscriptions to outcome-based pricing, where customers pay per task completed or per business outcome achieved. This aligns vendor incentives with customer success and can lead to higher customer lifetime value, but also introduces new risk for vendors if agents underperform.
Salesforce with its Agentforce platform and ServiceNow with Now Assist are the most prominent incumbents. Startups such as Sierra, Adept, and Cognitive have also raised significant venture capital to build agentic-native solutions for specific verticals like healthcare and finance.
Accenture, Deloitte, and other systems integrators face a existential threat: if platforms automate the work consultants once did, demand for traditional consulting could shrink. These firms are responding by acquiring AI-agent startups and building orchestration layers to manage multi-platform agent workflows.
CIOs should start with pilot programs in low-risk, high-volume processes like IT helpdesk or customer support. They need to reassess their vendor contracts for outcome-based models, invest in agent governance frameworks, and upskill their teams in AI agent monitoring and orchestration.
Key challenges include ensuring agent reliability and safety, integrating with legacy systems, managing data privacy when agents access enterprise data, and overcoming employee resistance to autonomous decision-making. Early adopters report that proper guardrails and human-in-the-loop mechanisms are essential.
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www.forbes.com
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