ICYMI: AI spending pressures, legacy IT strain, reskilling, and the end of the ‘SaaS apocalypse’
Your curated briefing on the latest news and ideas for AI-powered service operations
The world of tech moves fast. Every other week, we bring you some of the best stories to stay on top of the trends and at the top of your game. Here’s what you need to know:
IT Brew: IT leaders face budget pressure as AI spending grows
“Colm Sparks-Austin, EY Americas tech consulting leader, said CIOs should take AI implementation as an opportunity to cut projects that aren’t serving the bottom line or consolidate processes that are redundant between different teams. He even suggested that AI itself could be used to spot these duplicative operations.” Read more.
CIO Dive: Agentic AI strains legacy IT systems
“Agentic AI merits a new infrastructure standard, with governance playing a critical role in scaling inference and hybrid multicloud architecture … setting the bar for AI deployment, especially amid a push for digital sovereignty.” Read more.
Forbes: The organizations capturing AI's value are doing something different
“The real leaps in productivity happen when organizations learn to run multi-agent systems: coordinated teams of AI doing long-running, non-linear work. Humans shift from reviewing work to directing it while coordinated agents handle much of the execution. Productivity gains can range from 1x to 5x, depending on the use case.” Read more.
ZDNet: 'The SaaS apocalypse is overrated': How Workday and other software providers plan to survive AI
“Gartner suggests the shift to agentic AI is less an apocalypse and more a metamorphosis. SaaS will not be destroyed; it will emerge in a different form, with the winners defined by how they respond to the threat of disintermediation.” Read more.
ZDNet: The 'learn to code' era is over—and employers are on the hook for reskilling now
“Reskilling employees isn't just about teaching a specific skill, but rather instilling the mindset to be able to adapt when those skills change in six months. And increasingly, that adaptability is a quality companies are looking for among job candidates. However, many companies lack a thorough understanding of their current or near-future talent needs.” Read more.
Related reading: The cost of moving fast
The Works: The hardest seat at the table
“From the earliest days of the internet integration through BYOD (bring your own device) and shadow IT, the rise of the cloud and SaaS, digital transformation and enterprise service management, the role of technology leader has always been the hardest seat at the table. With each paradigm shift, IT leaders have taken on a greater role in formulating the long-term strategy of the business.” Read more.
