Building Tomorrow

Why Visionary Leadership Requires Architecting for Disruption

For decades, enterprise and solution architectures have revolved around building technology environments that are robust, stable, secure, and scalable. They have been designed for predictability rather than adaptability. In other words, we spent 20 years architecting for stability.

Grounded in siloed solutions like CRM and ERP, they served their purpose in an era where minimising risk and maintaining control were the primary objectives. But the world has changed, and so must our architectures.

Today, we live in an era of volatility. Markets shift overnight, supply chains falter with a single geopolitical shock, crises amplify at unprecedented speed, and customer demands evolve faster than businesses can react forcing organisations to respond dynamically to external pressures. Despite what we have achieved, I believe traditional architectures, which prize predictability, are ill-equipped to manage the chaos of this new reality.

To thrive in this volatile landscape, we need an architecture designed not for stability, but for disruption. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is that architecture. It is the architecture of our time and enables businesses to thrive in a world of constant change.

PaaS represents a fundamental shift from the technology blueprints we’ve relied on for the past two decades. While AI currently dominates the conversation as the next big disruptor, I think the real transformation is happening elsewhere. That would mean the real battle isn’t just about AI but about the architecture that will power it. The future is PaaS. Yes, it’s AI-enabled, but more importantly, it’s PaaS-driven.

So if PaaS is the architecture of volatility and disruption, and if it is reshaping the way organisations need to think about their technology architectures, why are we still seeing PaaS vendors battle head-to-head over market share in CRM?

Why Incumbents Fear PaaS

Make no mistake, incumbents fear the shift to PaaS because, for many, it’s an existential threat. Unlike traditional ERP systems or on-premise software suites, PaaS architectures offer an agility and responsiveness that legacy providers were never built to support.

Even cloud-native SaaS providers like Salesforce, Workday or Zendesk aren’t immune to the challenge. And that’s exactly why they don’t talk about it. It undermines their position because acknowledging PaaS means admitting their own limitations.

PaaS empowers organisations to dynamically adapt to external pressures, rapidly scale up or down, and integrate new capabilities at unprecedented speed. These attributes make it the ideal architecture for today’s chaotic world.

But for incumbents with deep roots in legacy technologies, this new battle is one they are ill-equipped to fight. They may talk about their “cloud” offerings, but most only have a loosely cobbled set of tools and infrastructure designed to mimic agility while retaining old licensing, development and service delivery models.

This is why many traditional providers steer clear of PaaS. Rather than embracing its disruptive potential, they are focused on protecting their role as the foundation of legacy enterprise ecosystems. That is where they can maintain control. That is also where they limit customer flexibility. A true shift to PaaS would undermine their dominance, so they avoid the conversation altogether.

But for the customer, the stakes are clear: adapt or be left behind.

The Six Strategic Imperatives of PaaS Architecture

Let’s take a moment to examine the defining traits of this disruptive architecture.

In early 2024, I began publicly presenting to a few clients in Singapore, Vietnam, and India on what I called the disruption imperative. My message wasn’t centered on the typical question, “What’s new in tech?” Instead, I reframed the conversation by asking a broader, more critical question: “What’s new in the world?”

The answer was both simple and profound: disruption is now so frequent as to be normal. It is the new standard operating model, and most organisations are woefully ill-equipped to handle it.

In relation to technology advice, this realisation had the immediate affect of shifting the focus from chasing incremental technological advancements to addressing the core challenge of the modern era: building strategies and architectures that thrive in volatility. For example, the real discussions aren’t about adopting the next big tech trend (i.e. AI); they are about fundamentally rethinking how organisations prepare for and adapt to an increasingly unpredictable world.

It became clear that success in this new paradigm would require a radical departure from legacy systems and a full embrace of architectures designed for agility, resilience, and disruption. But how do you architect for that?

Modern disruption has specific defining characteristics. Through a process of decomposition and analysis, I identified six.

They are the key architectural requirements. They are not optional. And they must be fully integrated into every service component to ensure the architecture effectively supports disruption readiness. Here they are:

1. Surging Demand

The ability to manage sudden and unpredictable increases in demand for resources, services, or products. In a volatile world, demand spikes are no longer exceptions, they are the rule. PaaS architectures allow organisations to meet surging demand without compromising performance or reliability.

2. Rapid Information Dissemination

In a hyper-connected world, information, whether accurate or not, spreads instantaneously. Organisations must be capable of managing and distributing information effectively to ensure clarity and maintain trust. PaaS enables real-time updates, seamless integration of communication channels, and visibility across all touchpoints.

3. Increased Remote Operations

Business continuity now depends on the ability to operate with minimal physical presence. PaaS architectures provide the flexibility to deliver services, maintain infrastructure, and support employees remotely, ensuring operations continue regardless of geographic or logistical constraints.

4. Disrupted Supply Chains

Global supply chains are more fragile than ever. The ability to adapt to interruptions and dynamically reconfigure workflows is critical. PaaS offers the agility to redesign processes and integrate alternative suppliers or logistics in real time.

5. Uncontrolled Escalation

This is different to the first characteristic. The consequences of crises, whether technological, reputational, or operational, tend to amplify over time. Managing escalation requires the ability to respond rapidly and decisively. PaaS architectures, with their inherent agility, allow organisations to monitor, predict, and contain these escalations before they spiral out of control.

6. Heightened Exploitation

Volatility creates vulnerabilities, and opportunistic exploitation of these vulnerabilities is a growing threat. From cybersecurity to infrastructure resilience, organisations must be able to detect, respond to, and mitigate exploitation. PaaS, with its integrated security and adaptive capabilities, ensures that vulnerabilities can be addressed dynamically and comprehensively¹.

Only PaaS architectures can meet these imperatives simultaneously within a single environment by enabling organisations to integrate across functional and service silos, adapt dynamically to changing conditions, and embed resilience and agility into their core operations.

Traditional approaches to legacy architectures, layered, hierarchical, and static, were built for a world that no longer exists. The new chaotic world demands something entirely different.

Why Continuing to Fight Old Battles is a Strategic Misstep

This brings us to the present day. Across industries, we see head-to-head AI, Hyperscaler, and CRM battles between Microsoft, Salesforce and ServiceNow. But curiously, and despite its critical importance, the same level of competition (i.e. marketing spend) is not happening in PaaS.

Yet as businesses face the dual challenges of adopting AI and navigating an increasingly volatile environment, it is essential to recognise that PaaS is the foundation upon which these transformations must be built.

AI may steal the spotlight as the belle of the ball, but without the adaptive infrastructure of PaaS, it will be more like a ballerina dancing on the tiger’s back. It’s enticing and beautifully elegant, but ultimately dangerously unstable.

My take: the real battle isn’t in the silos of CRM or even in the headlines of AI. It’s in providing the platform that allows these technologies to thrive in a world of constant change.

So imagine you are one of these vendors with a truly exceptional platform. Possibly the best on the market. Instead of leveraging its full potential, you decide to focus on dominating a specific vertical solution market, like CRM.

At first glance, this might seem like a logical move. After all, CRM is a proven market with clear revenue opportunities. But here’s the issue: those battles have already been fought and won. Entrenched incumbents dominate, and disrupting their position in such a mature market is a challenge of monumental cost and scale. Don’t get me wrong. You will win a lot of ground.

A decade ago, or even five years ago, this might have been the right call. Today, however, the dynamics have shifted. These legacy architectures remain important but are no longer where the most critical innovation is happening. The real advancements are taking place in platforms that transcend silos.

Within this context, for a vendor with a strong platform story, I think focusing on a legacy solution market is a risky, short-sighted strategy. It might add a few billion to the top line, which is great, but in doing so will need to allocate and retrain resources toward chasing incremental gains in mature markets while missing the larger opportunity to lead the next paradigm shift.

The sales organisation risks becoming trapped in short-term, head-to-head skirmishes rather than shaping the future. Tactical wins, like gaining market share or landing high-profile deals, may create the illusion of progress, but they will do little to create new 21st century markets and drive real industry transformation.

That same vendor, in a parallel universe, is poised to lead in the era of PaaS. They have an unprecedented opportunity to define the new operational paradigm and shape the future of enterprise technology.

In that simulation the path is clear: architect for disruption, not stability. Focus on building the ecosystems of the future, not chasing what may well be seen historically as incremental gains in outdated markets. Only in leaving legacy battles behind can a new market leader emerge as the defining enterprise software force in the architecture of volatility.

1. I wrote a note on this, available through the home screen, discussing the inevitable clash between security and observability vendors that will result in a new PaaS.