The competition between AI giants and traditional enterprise software vendors is intensifying in the field of AI agent tools. According to a February 12th report, enterprise-grade AI products from OpenAI and Anthropic are disrupting the existing enterprise software market. In response, established players like Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and ServiceNow are accelerating the launch of their own agent-building tools and management platforms to counter this challenge.
This competitive landscape spans four main product categories: browser-based agents, computer-operating agents, agent-building tools, and agent management consoles.
This week, Anthropic released a research preview of its Cowork agent for Windows users. Last week, OpenAI launched its Frontier platform, designed to help companies like Uber and Thermo Fisher Scientific create and manage multiple AI collaborators assigned to different tasks. These moves are increasing pressure on traditional enterprise software vendors. There is a widespread expectation in the market that future white-collar work will involve employees supervising a suite of AI agents that autonomously connect applications, rather than manually operating enterprise software themselves.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicted as early as 2024 that traditional software applications would "collapse" in the "age of agents," describing them as "essentially databases with business logic." Microsoft has even publicly discussed the possibility of charging subscription fees to AI systems that access its applications, similar to how it charges human users.
**Fierce Competition Across Four Product Categories**
Analysis indicates that major tech companies are competing in four key areas. Browser-based agents, offered by companies like OpenAI and Google, can perform multi-step tasks such as logging into supplier websites to place orders. Computer-operating agents, including Anthropic's Cowork, Google's Gemini Computer Use, and ServiceNow's desktop agent, can utilize desktop applications and files to generate financial reports.
In the realm of agent-building tools, products like Salesforce.com's Agentforce and Google's Gemini Enterprise allow customers to create agents capable of accessing various enterprise applications. The field of agent management consoles, also known as agent operations platforms, includes competitors like Microsoft's Agent 365 and OpenAI's Frontier. This raises a critical question: how many agent management consoles will the market support? Each customer will likely need only one, suggesting this could become a winner-takes-most competition.
The popularity of the open-source computer-operating agent OpenClaw among software engineers, along with Anthropic's Cowork, has captured the attention of top tech executives like Nadella.
**Security and Adoption Hurdles Remain**
Despite the promising outlook, these new agents face significant challenges before achieving widespread adoption. Both browser-based and computer-operating agents carry substantial security liabilities, with the potential to inadvertently leak user credentials or allow remote attackers to take control of a PC. Some AI buyers have reported that these products are currently too difficult to use.
There are also discrepancies in how companies describe the readiness of their agents. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have stated that their computer-operating agents are available only as research previews, implying they are not yet ready for large-scale enterprise adoption. However, vendors like ServiceNow, which rely on models from OpenAI and Anthropic, claim their computer-operating agents are fully market-ready.
Onkar Birk, Chief Technology Officer at Hilton, noted that despite the abundance of AI agent products available, he is not rushing to sign new subscriptions. The company currently uses a portfolio of AI products from vendors including OpenAI, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and Oracle to run automated internal agents. Birk pointed out that it took nearly three years to develop a customer support agent before deploying it to clients, indicating that "this is not a simple architecture investment."
**The Battle for the "System of Record"**
A diagram showcased by OpenAI in a blog post illustrates its agent orchestration technology sitting atop a company's "system of record." This term refers to applications, built by companies like Microsoft and Salesforce.com, that store critical enterprise data. Some executives at traditional enterprise application companies reportedly view this as OpenAI's attempt to demonstrate its significant influence over how businesses use and pay for software and AI.
Currently, traditional enterprise application firms like Salesforce.com or Microsoft do not appear prepared to directly block these new AI agents from using, accessing, or modifying data within flagship applications like Salesforce.com's CRM software or Microsoft Office 365. Nadella stated in a 2024 podcast that Microsoft could not prevent AI agents from accessing applications on company Windows devices. However, some AI executives believe that enterprise application companies might attempt to limit how frequently AIs can access an app or the data it stores.
A similar situation occurred last spring when Salesforce.com's Slack prohibited other AI and software companies from searching or storing Slack messages, even when customers permitted it. Ironically, many traditional enterprise companies have been using technology purchased from OpenAI and Anthropic to power their own agents, while these same AI firms are now trying to persuade employees to use their competing tools.
Last autumn, database company Snowflake released a product supported by models from these AI companies to help customers develop agents capable of searching for and retrieving sales or other business metric data. At the time, Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy remarked that, with AI breaking down traditional barriers and fostering new competition, software company leaders feel it's a scenario of "either get to a $1 trillion valuation or go to zero," underscoring the high-stakes nature of this competition.