Dive Brief:
- Software procurements are changing rapidly as organizations race to reduce application sprawl for generative and agentic AI, according to a recent Futurum Group study. The analyst firm surveyed 830 global IT decision-makers in February.
- Nearly two-thirds of respondents gravitated to a “mostly platform” model to consolidate enterprise data this year, up from 60% in the second half of 2025. Preference for best-of-breed point solutions dropped 3.6 percentage points to 20.7%.
- “What is driving platform consolidation in 2026 is not cost-cutting but the increasing use of AI and agentic workflows,” Futurum Group VP and Research Director Keith Kirkpatrick said in a post accompanying the report. “Organizations that stitch together 10 to 15 point solutions face an integration tax that makes enterprise-wide AI strategies nearly impossible.”
Dive Insight:
In the push-and-pull between IT perfection and practicality, AI has weighed in on the side of solutions that bring unity to fragmented data estates. The specter of autonomous agents running amok in ungoverned networks adds urgency to the platform push.
“Enterprise buyers have been prioritizing flexibility, scalability and the ease of integration with other software and tools,” Kirkpatrick told Channel Dive in an email. “This becomes even more important as agentic workflows start to be incorporated.”
While only 13% of respondents in the Futurum Group study were committed to a single platform strategy, 41% said their organization planned to consolidate by replacing disconnected applications with a platform or suite. Half of the organizations with consolidation on their agenda were aiming to move quickly, within a four-to-six-month window.
“We are certainly seeing consolidation of CRM, ERP, HR and work management software,” said Kirkpatrick. “Other types of apps, such as collaboration software, are also being consolidated to drive efficiency and reduce the maintenance, license and security costs associated with operating multiple apps that do roughly the same thing.”
Major software vendors anticipated the shift and are rallying channel partners to the cause.
After months of teasing its AI-powered productivity suite, Microsoft on May 1 rolled out the 365 E7 bundle — the first major enterprise package update since E5 over in 2015. The company is counting on its partners to use their knowledge of customer environments and the Microsoft stack to ease adoption, the company’s Chief Partner Officer Nicole Dezen told Channel Dive in April.
ERP giant SAP touted its integration of business applications, data cloud and AI into a single platform called SAP Business AI Platform earlier this month at its annual Sapphire conference. In January, the company put out a call to channel partners to help drive migrations to its cloud-based ERP and adoption of its AI add-ons.
“The ability to apply strong, enterprise-wide governance and security measures is table stakes for enterprise purchasers,” Kirkpatrick said. “Vendors that make this easy usually come out on top in evaluations.”
