The SaaS Migration Decision Tree

Before any migration strategy, you need to understand the structural force driving the migration. Not “AI is changing everything” — that is noise. The precise mechanism matters.

The unit of value in software is shifting from access to a tool to the completion of a task. This is not a meta — as explored in the interface layer wars reshaping consumer tech — phor. It is a billing event. When that shift is complete, every pricing model built on access — seats, licenses, named users — loses its economic foundation.

The proximate cause is the AI agent. Unlike traditional applications that are tools for a user, AI agents are the user — they plan, execute, and iterate on goals across entire workflows. An agent completing 2,300 support conversations per month does not occupy a seat. It calls an API. The phenomenon is now being called “seat compression” — a single AI agent replacing the need for dozens of software licenses formerly held by human employees.

The market has started pricing this in violently. Between February 3 and 5, 2026, approximately $300 billion in market value evaporated from the software sector. Software price-to-sales ratios compressed from 9x to 6x, a level not seen since the mid-2010s. This is not a correction. It is a structural repricing of an asset class whose underlying billing logic has been invalidated.