Driven by AI, we are entering a new era of enterprise software, ushering in systems of intelligence.  In the mid 1980s, driven by the growth of the client/server architecture, we saw the dramatic rise of systems of record. These are the back office software applications that helped enterprises run their ERP, HR, CRM, and core IT workflows. These technologies were relatively specialized, and helped automate any of the most critical tasks in the enterprise. They were defined by structured data, back office automation, and leveraged by only by select users in an enterprise. With the rise of cloud and mobile in the mid 2000s, we saw a new era of systems of engagement, as coined by Geoffrey Moore. In a world of much more dynamic and ad-hoc work in the enterprise, systems of engagement were tools for collaboration, communication, video, work and project management, social and intranets, and more. These tools dealt with all the messy, unstructured data in an enterprise - the conversations, collaborative docs, and media that began to drive a shift in how the entire enterprise worked.  Now, in the mid 2020s, we are firmly entering a new era of enterprise software, which gives rise to systems of intelligence. Systems of intelligence combine enterprise data, workflows, and AI, to deliver insights and automation to an organization. Importantly, because of the ability for AI to process unlimited unstructured data - like documents, video, or communications - we also get the same benefit from this messy data as we did our structured data. We can query, synthesize, calculate, and automate all the work around thus unstructured data just as easily as we could query a database before. Unlike systems of engagement that generally broke down the more information that goes into them, we see the reverse now with AI, where software can become more powerful and useful the more data it has access to. And with AI Agents being a native property of systems of intelligence, these systems aren’t only leveraged by every employee, they dramatically expand the output of the workforce. Systems of record are where people work by largely themselves. Systems of engagement let users work collaboratively with other people. Now systems of intelligence let us work seamlessly with people and AI.  These systems will also talk to each other in completely new ways. Instead of deterministic APIs and clear handshakes, with Agentic AI, these systems will communicate with each other much like a humans do. A user will make a request in one system, and it will fan out the ask to a variety of other similar systems relevant for the desired information. And if it didn’t get what it wanted, it will simply request again in a different way, just as a person would. We’re going to see systems of intelligence in every domain of work - across every line of business and every vertical. Some of these technologies will be incumbents that evolve, and many offerings will be brand new startups that fill a new gap between existing systems. Wild times ahead.

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