What should customers expect from SaaS vendors in an AI world?

Last month was ZohoDay26, our annual analyst event. One of the topics we addressed head-on was what's on everyone's mind — the elephant in the room — whether AI marks the death of SaaS. Recently, diginomica reported on the event and even profiled one of our customers. In this article, I want to give readers a look into how we think software vendors need to alter their value proposition.

Inside Zoho, we are approaching the supposed 'SaaS-pocalypse' with internal rigor and reflection. What follows is an article inspired by a letter that I originally posted on Connect, our company intranet.

Why AI puts pressure on SaaS vendors?

While we readily acknowledge that AI is a threat to the profitability and viability of SaaS providers, we need to clearly understand (and communicate to those that don't) the economics of a SaaS business and what it actually does for customers. This ...