Gartner on Wednesday published a report saying the adoption of agentic AI will reshape revenue models and competitive dynamics for enterprise software.

From now to 2030, up to $234 billion in enterprise application spending is forecast to be affected by “agentic arbitrage,” Gartner said. That is about 20 percent of total enterprise application software-as-a-service (SaaS) spending in 2030.

Agentic arbitrage occurs as AI agents carry out tasks across multiple systems, reducing the need for users to interact with existing software interfaces one by one.

“Agentic AI is changing the structure of the software economy,” George Brocklehurst (조지 브로클허스트), a Gartner vice president analyst, said. “Agentic systems bypass existing applications centered on user experience (UX) and deliver results directly, making software less visible. This weakens, for many enterprise software vendors, the link between user growth and revenue growth,” he said.

The change is expected to reshape how software is built, priced and consumed. Brocklehurst said the phenomenon will redefine the fragmentation of the SaaS market as it is known, calling it a “Saaspocalypse.” He said it is closer to a transformation than an end. Gartner said SaaS will not disappear but evolve into other forms, and the shift will be both a threat and an opportunity for incumbents and new challengers.

Gartner analysts said expectations for enterprise software are also changing because of AI agents. Brocklehurst said companies will not focus on buying additional new tools or dashboards. “Companies want better performance. But simply adding AI functions often leads to higher costs rather than improved performance,” he said. “To achieve better performance through AI, companies need systems that can continuously maintain accumulated corporate knowledge and customer context,” he said.

Some vendors are offering agentic solutions that support autonomous end-to-end workflows, orchestration across systems, and functions for customer context and knowledge accumulation. Those solutions can contribute to improved business performance and return on investment (ROI). In many cases, however, large-scale service投入 is typically needed to implement them.

Brocklehurst said as organizations make greater use of agentic AI systems, user interfaces (UI) can no longer be a differentiator. He said existing SaaS market share will be eroded by incumbents, and new entrants will take it through agentic platforms that are not limited to specific industries.

Gartner stressed that existing software vendors must shift from interface-based value to performance-based value to remain competitive and secure growth opportunities. It also called on vendors to integrate agentic capabilities into their products at the execution stage to strengthen their position in the value chain, and to secure and maintain customer-specific knowledge, not just data.