IT and data teams were promised that AI would make work easier. Instead, it’s created new layers of complexity. Today’s digital workplaces are filled with disconnected systems, siloed data, and endless toggling between apps that don’t talk to each other. The problem isn’t the lack of innovation; it’s who owns the data that fuels it.
The Hidden Cost of the Application-Centric Enterprise
For IT leaders, the proliferation of SaaS tools has delivered flexibility at the expense of control. Every new application brings another data silo, another API to manage, and another compliance exposure. Legacy vendors have little incentive to change that. Their business models depend on keeping enterprise data locked inside proprietary systems.
A recent example: Salesforce updated Slack’s terms of service to prohibit organizations from using large language models (LLMs) to ingest Slack data. Bulk export of Slack data is now blocked, meaning you can’t train internal AI systems on that data. Instead, you must use Salesforce’s own real-time search within its ecosystem.
These moves are not about security or privacy—they’re about control of the data layer, the true source of power in the age of AI.
The Productivity Tax Nobody Talks About
Every IT professional knows the cost of tool sprawl. A Harvard Business Review study found that knowledge workers toggle between applications about 1,200 times per day, losing nearly four hours of productivity each week. That’s a 10% hit on every working day—time that could be reclaimed through integration, automation, and unified data access.
This “toggle tax” represents a hidden cost of fragmented architecture. Legacy vendors profit from keeping teams tethered to their dashboards and screens. The interfaces aren’t the moat; the trapped data is.
Data Independence: The Foundation for Enterprise AI
Generative AI, co-pilots, and autonomous agents are accelerating the shift away from traditional user interfaces. Soon, your employees won’t click through menus or dashboards to get work done—they’ll ask an AI agent to “generate a quarterly report,” “identify high-risk accounts,” or “draft an incident summary.”
For that to work, those agents need real-time access to unified, trusted data from across the enterprise—CRM, ERP, marketing automation, customer service, finance, and beyond.
The future of IT isn’t about managing another front end. It’s about creating a secure, open, intelligent data layer that connects and governs the data fueling those systems. That’s where the enterprise regains control.
Why the Data Layer Is the New Control Plane
As conversational AI reduces the importance of traditional application interfaces, data infrastructure becomes the true competitive edge. IT leaders who establish data independence—by unifying, governing, and securing enterprise data at the core—will enable faster innovation and safer AI adoption.
The organizations that win the AI race won’t be the ones with the most dashboards; they’ll be the ones with the most trusted and accessible data foundation.
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