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My LinkedIn feed is full of a growing narrative predicting a coming SaaS apocalypse. It’s actually full of AI-slop-thought-leadership as well, but that is another story. The idea is that generative AI tools like Claud will eventually become so powerful that businesses will simply replace all their specialized SaaS software vendors with a single AI tool. As someone who’s worked in IT for 20 years and currently uses these tools in the workplace, I want to immediately push back on that idea
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers has been an Apple IT admin since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a mobile device management system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, 1000s of Macs, and 1000s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, share stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for IT departments.
The cloud migration parallel
If you want to understand how AI will actually infiltrate the enterprise, you can go look at the evolution of cloud computing that’s still happening. If you read the tech press in the early 2010s, the perception was that everyone was already 100% in the cloud. The reality was much different. Technology adoption happens gradually, and then suddenly.
Here we are in 2026, and there are still companies executing baseline cloud migrations. In fact, I just finished wrapping one up myself a few weeks ago. The transition to AI workflows will follow this exact same long-tail trajectory, not a 12-month rip-and-replace, where by 2027 every SaaS vendor is displaced by Google Gemini or Claud.
I simply do not believe that IT teams will replace all their established vendors with OpenAI or Anthropic. Enterprise environments rely on highly specialized tools purpose-built to perform specific tasks.
An AI-only company is not going to magically replace your Apple device management vendor, your telemetry pipeline, SIEM, or your network management system. General-purpose AI models are incredible at generating text and code, but they are not designed to natively manage the complex, highly regulated nuances of your corporate fleet. It’ll be a both/and. Every tool will have AI built in, but you won’t replace every tool with AI.
The security and support advantage
Another massive reason IT will not abandon specialized SaaS is risk mitigation. When you buy a dedicated SaaS tool for device management or network monitoring, you are buying a product that understands your exact regulatory and security needs. General AI models are essentially black boxes. You cannot (and should not) simply hand the keys to your corporate fleet over to a generic language model. Specialized vendors have compliance frameworks, audit logs, and strict access controls built directly into their platforms to provide guardrails. Again, SaaS is about transferring risk and responsibility.
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