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points by gadders 2 days ago | 0 comments

I was thinking we should have our own internal saas-pocalypse where I work, or at least threaten one to our vendors.

It used to be that vendors could tie their cost to the value they provide, but now their cost is more correlated to the token spend to reverse engineer and re-implement them (using appropriate clean room controls etc). If their cost goes to far above the AI-driven re-write, they're more likely to get jettisoned (absent some other moat not included purely in the technology).

I'm sure we can all think of products that charge a fair whack in license fees, but would not be massively difficult to re-implement (or at least for the subset of features actually used).

[–] mikepurvis 2 days ago

On some level, yes, though when I choose a saas product, what I'm really choosing is not a basket of features, but rather someone else to be worrying about scaling, monitoring, security patches, uptime, etc.

Like in theory your agents can build all that too, but all the ancillary bits benefit a lot from being spread across a pool of users with different time zones, release cycles, whatever.

[–] jopsen 2 days ago

Exactly, just because you can vibe code an HTML sanitizer or an operation system, doesn't mean that you should..

And its the same reason you'd rather have a SaaS vendor, than asking an agent why the cloud bill keeps climbing and then have to debate the impact of delete such and such VMs or databases that nobody knows what do :)

You also don't ask your agent to start from assembly.

Things you can get upfront as libraries or services are things you and your agent don't have to worry about.

I'm not even sure there is anything new here, just that we have a capability jump with LLMs, you'll probably prefer spending it on building features, not replacing vendors (unless they are crazy expensive).

[–] francisofascii 2 days ago

So I wonder if the more generic SAAS platforms (like Azure, AWS) that can offer scaling, monitoring, security patches, etc. will start to niche or industry specific Saas tools. Since the "basket of features" is not what is really needed.

[–] gadders 2 days ago

Yeah, and admittedly you need to pick your problem domain sensibly.

i.e. you wouldn't vibe code your general ledger, but I'd guess Confluence is pretty vulnerable.

[–] infamouscow 2 days ago

Many organizations just want to diffuse responsibility away from themselves and will gladly sign a contract to do so. Paying a vendor is infinitely more affordable than the risk of trying to bring a vendors' core competency in-house.

I think the SaaS-pocalypse is going to surface more from new AI-first SaaS companies entering the market and undercutting incumbents in a way that's difficult to compete with.

[–] tmpz22 2 days ago

At the same time we have to value domain experience when it is a cornerstone. Ive worked for "middleman" companies that at face value seem superfluous only to realize we handled relationships or bureaucracies much more effectively then our clients could and thereby provided concrete value well beyond our cost.

[–] toomuchtodo 2 days ago

Just use a vendor intelligence service to find out what others are paying to cram down what they're trying to charge you. Lots of competitors in this space, you provide them contract details, they provide a report on how and where to push.