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Welcome back! The debate over whether AI might replace traditional enterprise apps such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, and Workday often ignores a more likely near-term scenario: that AI will stop some customers increasing their spending on those apps. Brian Spanswick, chief information officer at data security firm Cohesity, which generates more than $2 billion in revenue a year, said a large chunk of the budget for his 400-person IT department goes towards subscriptions to apps that employees use to automate business processes such as tracking and billing customers or auditing how employees are using company devices. Based on early tests, Spanswick believes he can cut spending on traditional apps’ automation tools—often sold as add-ons to the core products—in half by using newfangled AI agents. “I’m going to keep our major [enterprise] platforms for at least the next one or two years,” Spanswick said, referring to Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow. “But what I’m not going to spend on is the overhead on those platforms for process automation,” he said, referring to extra automation features those applications sell on top of their core software. For instance, Spanswick said he was considering buying a ServiceNow tool called IT Asset Management Software that automatically shuts down and decommissions company devices and accounts when they’re no longer in use, such as when an employee leaves the company. But his thinking changed after a Cohesity cybersecurity executive created a similar tool using Anthropic’s Claude Code agent in less than two days. Spanswick said the company is still stress-testing the Claude-built product but so far it appears to be “much cheaper” than ServiceNow’s product, which can cost hundreds of dollars per user per month. In a statement, a ServiceNow spokesperson disputed the idea that its software could be replaced by vibe coded tools, arguing that such AI replacements “typically stall” because they lack “the compliance, the integrations, the auditability that regulated enterprises actually require.” Similarly, Spanswick said his company paid a team of consultants to develop an AI agent that replaced software from cybersecurity provider Splunk, which had been automatically detecting and flagging incidents that could signal a cyberattack. Spanswick estimates the new AI agent will cost less to operate than Splunk’s product did. (See an example of another IT executive using AI agents for similar cybersecurity cost savings here.) Spanswick said the growing use of AI agents could also change the makeup of people in IT departments. It could be more useful to hire analysts that understand the tasks that the AI is automating rather than hire people who have a technical IT background, he said. “The value of having an analyst who understands what it takes to [track customer invoices and spending] with integrity” will become an increasingly desirable job skill, he said. | 
