Agentic AI: The strategic shift no one’s talking about
By Troy Ridgewell, Practice Lead: Cloud Security, Versent
As seen in channellife.com.au Jul 22, 2025
The conversation around AI agents has been fascinating, but there’s a parallel story unfolding that deserves attention. While capabilities and safety dominate headlines, a fundamental business disruption is quietly reshaping how organisations operate and most haven’t recognised it yet.
The developer divide
We’re witnessing the emergence of a new class of “super developers”, established engineers who’ve learned to think alongside AI companions. These aren’t your typical developers using Copilot for autocomplete. They’re professionals who’ve fundamentally rewired how they approach problem-solving, treating AI as a supercomputer thinking partner.
Meanwhile, the standard human developer is becoming obsolete. For anyone technical, the path forward is becoming clear: evolve into an AI-enabled professional, or watch opportunities shift elsewhere.
The build vs buy revolution
Here’s where it gets interesting for business. Companies with AI-augmented development teams can suddenly build what they used to buy. The traditional build vs buy equation just got flipped on its head, companies can now create solutions tailored specifically to their workflows and business needs.
Sure, established SaaS providers have momentum and multi-customer data advantages, built from years of collecting valuable customer usage patterns and operational insights. But for startups trying to break into crowded markets? The barrier to adoption just got significantly higher when prospects can build competing solutions in-house.
The procurement battleground
The first organisational department to feel this shift? IT Procurement.
Contract negotiations could be one of the first places to heat up. Companies are beginning to recognise an uncomfortable reality: their data, usage patterns, and operational insights within SaaS platforms have intrinsic value. They’re not just customers anymore, they’re unwitting data contributors to systems that charge them premium rates.
The power dynamic could change significantly. Are procurement teams positioned to take advantage of this?
The impact zones
Not everyone faces the same urgency: cloud engineers who aren’t adopting AI to 5x their productivity should be concerned, the learning curve is steep, but the alternative is career stagnation, while industrial infrastructure engineers remain insulated by long-term support cycles.
Professional services companies face perhaps the biggest opportunity – and risk. The winning firms will be those building AI-enhanced toolkits that systematise their expertise across multiple clients. Think beyond just using AI for individual tasks, this is about capturing institutional knowledge, repeated problem-solving patterns, and domain expertise into reusable systems. Just as customers are realising their data has value within SaaS platforms, consultancies must recognise that their accumulated wisdom and solution methodologies are their true competitive moat. Those treating AI as just another productivity tool will find themselves commoditised by firms that have industrialised their expertise.
The toolkit advantage
The companies that adopt a toolkit mindset, systematising their expertise into repeatable, AI-enhanced solutions, will have a strategic advantage. It’s not about having smart people anymore; it’s about having smart systems.
The question isn’t whether this shift is coming. It’s whether you are using it now.