AI is reshaping the enterprise faster than any technology in recent memory. But as CIOs race to modernize, one truth is becoming clear: the future won’t belong to whoever has the most applications. It will belong to whoever controls the data.
Legacy vendors know it. And they’re quietly locking down the one thing every enterprise needs to win in the AI era: access to their own data.
The new power move: locking the gates on your data
Conversational AI, copilots, and autonomous workflows are changing how employees interact with technology. Tasks that once required navigating dashboards or dropdowns can now be handled by an AI agent through a single natural-language query.
That shift threatens the dominance of traditional software vendors. If an enterprise AI agent can simply ask, “Find all customers in Europe who haven’t renewed in 90 days and generate a personalized outreach plan,” the AI—not the application—becomes the interface.
To stay relevant, legacy providers are tightening control over data within the walls of their applications. Salesforce, for example, changed Slack’s terms of service restricting large language models from ingesting or exporting its data. Slack’s bulk export is now blocked, and users must rely on Salesforce’s proprietary real-time search—one that only works inside its ecosystem.
Other vendors are following suit. The new vendor lock-in isn’t about APIs or pricing tiers. It’s about controlling the flow of enterprise data.
“In the age of AI, the battle isn’t over dashboards. It’s over who controls the data that drives them.” Manish Sood, CEO & Founder of Reltio
The hidden cost of application sprawl
Even without these restrictions, the current software landscape is unsustainable. The average knowledge worker toggles between apps roughly 1,200 times a day, according to Harvard Business Review, which equals about four hours of lost productivity every week.
That adds up to five full workweeks of wasted time per employee annually. Across the enterprise, this so-called toggle tax becomes a multi-million-dollar productivity drain.
Every dashboard, menu, and unread alert is a symptom of the same problem: fragmented data. CIOs have spent years integrating systems, yet each new SaaS platform adds another new layer of complexity. The result is an organization rich in tools but poor in visibility.
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The future of enterprise architecture: intelligent context
LLMs and AI agents will make most application interfaces redundant. Employees won’t need to log in to 10 systems to complete a task. They’ll simply ask an AI assistant to do it. But that assistant is only as good as the data behind it. It won’t work if the data
That’s why the next generation of enterprise architecture must start with a unified, trusted, real-time data layer. This intelligent foundation connects, cleanses, and governs data across business domains, ensuring accuracy, context, and control.
With a trusted data layer in place, CIOs can finally move beyond the limitations of vendor silos. Data becomes portable, interoperable, and ready for any AI model, co-pilot, or autonomous agent the business deploys next. This will help organizations avoid paying the toggle tax and enable skilled workers to focus on innovating instead of juggling screens.
“Owning the data layer isn’t just an IT strategy. It’s a business strategy.” Manish Sood, CEO & Founder, Reltio.
What’s next
CIOs are entering a defining moment. The shift from application-centric to data-centric architecture will set AI-ready enterprises apart from those still buried in screens and silos.
The winners will be those who:
- Maintain data ownership instead of ceding control to vendors
- Build open, scalable architectures that can feed any AI model
- Unify and govern their enterprise data across all systems
Because in the age of AI, data isn’t just an asset — it’s the enterprise itself. And whoever controls the data controls the future.
Build the trusted data foundation your AI strategy demands with Reltio resources.
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Source: News