In 2026, the industry that has driven digital transformation for decades will face its own extraordinary disruption. Big software’s challenges have been brewing for years.

And now comes AI.

In our March 2025 report, “The End of a Software Era,” AlixPartners predicted that mid-market enterprise software companies would face an unprecedented squeeze—caught between nimble AI-native startups rapidly reimagining what business software can be, and tech behemoths pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an AI infrastructure arms race.

As we enter 2026, the reality of that disruption is arriving faster than anticipated.

The astonishingly rapid improvement of generative and agentic AI tools is striking deep into every aspect of how enterprise software companies build, sell, and capture value. The industry that once coasted on predictable recurring revenue and consistent growth will now learn to navigate a new era organized around fundamentally different economics.

We have worked with over 300 software companies, standing shoulder to shoulder with investors and CEOs through major industry transitions. When software moved from on-prem to cloud, we were there. Today, as the industry transforms with AI, we are again on the front lines—working every day to help enterprise software companies through the pains and possibilities. We see how legacy metrics and playbooks are failing to present the right levers to drive future growth. And we see how many companies—especially in the mid-market—are floundering. It is impossible to know the future, but our experience helps us to see it, and that is what we have done here.

- Giacomo Cantu, Global Leader, Technology, Media, and Telecommunications

This report aims to predict and guide. It identifies the risks and opportunities of AI’s inevitable arrival, and suggests how organizations can prepare and respond.

These predictions fall into three categories:

Innovation

How and what enterprise software developers build

Path to market

How AI is changing the way software is sold and priced

Strategic implications

How companies are valued, and how they should adapt to survive

2026 Enterprise software technology predictions report

In this 2026 Enterprise software predictions report, we examine seven critical dynamics reshaping the enterprise software landscape and explain the specific transformations companies should execute to respond effectively.

These predictions reflect the inflection points we clearly observe across the industry, as AI forces fundamental changes across software development, interfaces, trust architectures, go-to-market operations, pricing models, valuation frameworks, and business structure itself.

We believe that companies mastering these transitions will define the next era of enterprise software leadership, and we predict that those unable to adapt will be sidelined as the industry landscape redraws itself.