[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)] As enterprise software companies build a bigger presence in the AI era, their moves around software interfaces have emerged as a key point to watch.

The industry on Sept. 17 is seeing two broad patterns around software interfaces. One prioritises getting users to come directly to a software platform to use it. The other places more weight on expanding use even if customers run the software through external vendors' AI tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Salesforce, known for its cloud CRM, is one of the companies representing the latter stance.

Salesforce is speeding up support that lets users access Salesforce apps and immediately use various functions from other companies' AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude. The Information recently reported that Salesforce made it clear that "the API, not the browser, is the user interface (UI)."

Salesforce also disclosed a large number of details supporting that position at its annual Dreamforce 2026 conference, held from Sept. 15 to 17 local time. It first introduced a new AI interface layer called AIforce. The company said AIforce supports people in using its platform functions at the point where they work with AI agents. It stressed that while Model Context Protocol (MCP) technology is at the level of connecting agents to data sources, AIforce lets users use Salesforce software through the AI agents they are using without directly accessing Salesforce software.

Salesforce is also active in expanding integration between external AI agents and its platform. At this Dreamforce event, it announced that it would strengthen data and AI cooperation with AWS and Google Cloud.

As part of cooperation with AWS, users of the enterprise AI agent Amazon Q can now access Salesforce real-time CRM data and carry out autonomous tasks on behalf of sales and customer support teams. Salesforce is also working with Google Cloud to support Gemini Enterprise customers so they can immediately use Salesforce CRM data and functions without separate integration.

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So-called headless, which removes the UI and lets AI agents directly access data stored in software, has already emerged as a major variable in the enterprise software market. In addition to Salesforce, influential software companies such as Workday and SAP are also providing some functions in a headless way.

Companies such as Salesforce also have tasks to solve. One is how to charge customers when external AI tools access data stored in Salesforce software. The Information reported that another task is how to prevent customers from extracting data outside the application to avoid paying data storage costs to the service provider.

Headless could also bring major changes to enterprise software business models, the Financial Times reported. Some expect it to lead to greater use of software than before, but others point out it could be a business model risk for companies that have charged fees based on the number of people.

The FT reported, "The bigger problem is that a large part of the value users got from software came from the UI." It said this includes input forms, dashboards, analytics tools and other functions that determine how work is performed and managed. It added that once AI agents begin to bypass the UI and directly access data, many existing functions will be provided in new ways that have little to do with existing human-centred software. The FT added that such change risks turning what is essential software today into a simple back-end database in the future, which would still be indispensable but might no longer command high prices.

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Depending on their situation, some software companies are taking the opposite route to Salesforce. Rather than using software in external AI tools, they are placing more weight on using AI within software. Figma, an enterprise design app, is also moving in that direction.

Figma CEO Dylan Field (딜런 필드) told The Information, "As the performance of our own AI tools for designing apps and user interfaces improves, cases where work happens directly inside Figma rather than using Claude or other well-known AI assistants will increasingly grow."

The Information reported that Figma's different path from Salesforce and others is also linked to differences in business structure. Unlike Salesforce and other enterprise apps where corporate users store core data, Figma as a design tool is more dependent on a future in which people still visit websites, it said.