Software is Becoming a Commodity. That's Good News

What "Commodity" Actually Means 

When people hear that software is becoming a commodity, they assume it means software is losing its value. That is not what it means. A car is a commodity. So is a PC. So is broadband. Each of those industries supports trillions of dollars of economic activity. The product itself stops being the differentiator, but the businesses around the product are very much alive. 

The honest implication for SaaS is different, and more uncomfortable. It means software companies have to start acting like normal businesses. Generate profits. Be self-sustainable. Stop depending on external capital to fund the next growth story. For decades, software lived in an unusually forgiving environment where capital was patient and growth excused almost any operational sin. That era is closing. 

This is not pessimism. It is maturity. 

Kentico was Always the Outlier 

I have a twenty-year relationship with Kentico. We have been bootstrapped from the start, and we still are. In a market shaped by venture capital, that made us the odd one out for most of our history. While other vendors were optimizing for headline growth, we were optimizing for being a real business. Profitable. Self-funded. Accountable to customers, not to a fundraising calendar. 

For a long time, that approach felt out of step with the industry. Today it looks like the model the rest of the industry is being pushed back toward. 

Our competitive advantage was never the product alone. It is the combination of product, service, the partner ecosystem, and the way we collaborate with the agencies that build on top of us. When software was racing on features, that combination was harder to explain in a pitch deck. As software becomes a commodity, it becomes the most important part of the conversation. 

This is Exactly Why Our AI Approach Has Not Changed 

The same principles that carried us through the SaaS shift, and through the move from CMS to DXP before that, guide how we are approaching AI now. We are not riding the hype. We are focused on the use cases where AI actually moves the needle for our customers. 

That discipline is not new. It is the same one that shaped Xperience by Kentico itself, where we drew a clear line about which capabilities belonged in a modern DXP and which did not. It is the same one we are applying now with AIRA, our AI built directly into Xperience by Kentico, and with KentiCopilot, our developer-side assistant. Neither of those products exists because AI is fashionable. They exist because we identified the workflows where embedded AI genuinely accelerates real work, and we built only there. 

When AI is integrated into a real workflow, with real customer data and real governance, it changes how fast organizations can move. When it is bolted onto the side of a product to satisfy a roadmap slide, it usually does not survive contact with the customer's actual operations. 

Did We Hit the Ceiling With AI models? 

This is the question I get asked most often right now. Are we close to AGI? Will model improvements slow down? Did we just see the top of the curve? 

My honest answer is, does it matter? 

There is no doubt that today's AI brings real value in real use cases. Our customers are seeing it. Our teams are seeing it. That value does not depend on whether the next model generation is twice as smart or marginally smarter. The point is not to predict where AI lands. Nobody can predict it accurately, no matter how confident they sound. The point is to be ready for whichever direction it takes. 

We have been here before. When SaaS started reshaping the software industry, we did not chase every architectural trend. We moved when it made sense for our customers, and we kept the discipline of building something durable. When the market shifted from CMS to DXP, we did the same. We did not rebrand to ride a wave. We rebuilt the substance, then renamed it. Both transitions were uncomfortable at the time. Both look obvious in hindsight. 

That is the operating principle. Predicting the future is a losing game. Being prepared for it, adaptable to it, and disciplined about what is worth pursuing, is a winning one. 

Whoever Wins the Model Race, We Will Be There 

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or someone none of us is talking about yet. It does not matter to us who wins the model race. The model is the engine. Our job is to build the experience layer that sits between that engine and the marketers, developers, and brands relying on us. That is where our customers expect us to deliver value, and that is where the value lives the longest. 

The companies that will struggle in the next phase of this industry are the ones whose only story was the product itself. The companies that will do well are the ones that have always built around the product, with service, governance, partnerships, and operational discipline. 

We started this way because we had no other choice. Today it looks like the model the rest of the industry is trying to copy. 

I am fine with that.