The Enterprise is the Platform Now
Why PaaS Providers Need a New Partner Playbook for Growth
For decades, technology providers have regarded the world’s largest banks, retailers, and resource companies as their most prized customers. Given their scale and complexity, these businesses represent significant revenue opportunities everywhere, but comparative to the overall market, especially in Australia.
That has meant the focus has always been firstly on maintaining traditional vendor-customer relationships as the foundation of the business model, and then selling big solutions to meet their needs. Partners always operate in close proximity, often in a dominant advisory capacity.
When the Enterprise Becomes the Platform
What happens to the model when major enterprises are no longer just consumers of technology? What happens when they become creators, platform providers, and digital product companies in their own right?
Consider how Commonwealth Bank is leading the shift with its Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) offering, opening its scalable digital platform to FinTechs and smaller institutions right across its ecosystem.
Conside how Coles is leveraging AI and analytics not just to optimise logistics and customer engagement, but potentially to commercialise those capabilities as platforms.
Consider how Woodside is developing proprietary mining optimisation software that could extend well beyond its own operations.
These are not isolated examples.
The technology landscape is evolving rapidly. We can see it in every facet of our lives. But what is truly remarkable, and less visible to the naked eye, is that enterprise innovation is now keeping pace. For perhaps the first time, the business environment is evolving as fast, if not faster, than the technology itself.
Traditional enterprises are stepping into roles once reserved for software vendors and cloud-native startups. They’re not just buying and using technology. They are building it, architecting it as platforms, and in many cases, commercialising it.
Commonwealth Bank’s BaaS model, Coles’ emerging AI-driven logistics platforms, and Woodside’s proprietary mining optimisation tools all point to the same shift. Large enterprises are becoming technology companies (vendors) in their own right.
I’ve been working on this piece for six months and there is a lot to unpack, so it’s a bit longer than my usual posts. But every part felt worth including. If you’re short on time, here are the five key takeaways upfront. Feel free to read on if any of them catch your interest.
1. Control is shifting. The power to set enterprise architecture will rest with those who own the platforms and run the infrastructure, not with traditional SIs or PaaS vendors.
2. Large enterprises, think banks, retailers, and industrial giants won’t just use technology, they will build and monetise their own platforms, reshaping ecosystems from the inside out.
3. The era of broad, bespoke integration is ending. SIs will either go deeper with fewer platforms, focusing on orchestration, governance, and optimisation, or face accelerating irrelevance. Hypercompetition to specialise will benefit the enterprise customer.
4. Automation and PaaS maturity will quickly reduce the inefficiencies that once justified high-margin labour models. Consulting must shift from arbitrage and headcount to outcomes.
5. Selling alone won’t be enough. To stay relevant, PaaS vendors must treat enterprise clients as strategic partners and embed themselves to co-create in platform-led innovation.
The Illusion of Fintech Disruption
If you are still with me, let’s take a small step back.
Walk into any fintech conference today and you’ll hear the same hype. “Revolutionary advisor platforms!” “Seamless digital experiences!” “Data-driven insights!”
I really do shrink from marketing that seems intent on repeating the mistakes of past tech and finance cycles marked by overblown promises and underwhelming outcomes. As historical tech-bubbles (and the occasional banking royal commission) reminds us, hype without substance catches up eventually.
So let’s do better. Calm down, Fintech. Because beyond the marketing noise, the real transformation isn’t happening in the spotlight, it’s unfolding deeper inside the system, where the structures, incentives, and architectural control are actually shifting.
For financial advisors, the rise of “wrap” solutions, basically slick portals, integrated dashboards, and API-fed ecosystems, feels like a step change. But for anyone in technology, this is not innovation. It’s financial services, particularly the mid-market, finally catching up to what enterprise software has been doing for decades.
Much of this shift has been driven by regulatory changes, rather than a deep rethinking of banking. In Australia, reforms like the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) legislation banned conflicted remuneration, including trailing commissions, forcing financial advisors to provide transparent, fee-for-service models.
Similarly, the Design and Distribution Obligations (DDO) and Financial Accountability Regime (FAR) have further tightened compliance, requiring advisors and institutions to modernise their data management and client engagement processes.
These regulations have left the industry with no choice but to adopt platforms that standardise workflows, improve compliance tracking, and enhance client reporting. Not because of an organic push for innovation, but because staying manual became untenable, if not illegal.
But these new solutions are not reimagining banking. They are simply repackaging existing processes with a more polished user experience and greater regulatory alignment. That’s okay. Not every transformation needs to be disruptive. Sometimes, being forced to modernise is still progress.
The glossy side of fintech has become a distraction from the real transformation happening in financial services. While the industry fixates on sleek user interfaces and digital wrappers, the true disruptors like embedded finance, decentralised models, and AI-driven decision-making remain on the fringes. These are the hard, structural shifts, yet they receive far less attention than they deserve.
That got me thinking. If the most meaningful change isn’t coming from the fintech darlings or wealth platforms, then where is it happening? The answer is within the largest banks themselves. And the scale of that change isn’t incremental, it’s tectonic to the capital structures that underpin the technology industry.
Banks, Retailers, and Miners Are Redefining the Stack
Commonwealth Bank is no longer just a financial services provider. It has become a technology giant. It is not simply adopting technology. It is building and owning platforms, digital ecosystems, and data-driven services that extend well beyond banking. The largest financial institutions are no longer just buyers of technology. They are now major technology vendors in their own right, developing in-house capabilities at a scale that once belonged exclusively to traditional software providers.
This shift demands a fundamental rethink of how PaaS providers engage with banks. For decades, banks were treated as customers. They were buyers of technology to support operations. But that dynamic is breaking down. As banks become technology creators in their own right, the traditional vendor-customer model no longer fits. It’s a 20th-century relic about as relevant today as a political long lunch at Machiavelli’s on Clarence Street.
Selling $10 million worth of licensing and services to a bank might seem impressive, but in the grand scheme of this new world order, it’s a rounding error. Somewhere inside that same bank, someone is working on a platform, a marketplace, and an industry-wide infrastructure play worth billions. So the real question for PaaS providers isn’t how to sell to banks. It is now how to stay relevant as banks become the platform builders themselves.
The opportunity is no longer about selling technology to banks, it’s about realigning with them as strategic partners. As banks (and retailers, and miners, and telcos, and yes, even SI partners) increasingly develop their own platforms, PaaS providers must get sharper about where true external innovation is still needed, and where banks are simply rebranding internal solutions.
I also don’t think the future is about competing with banks. That winner take all mentality is also a 20th century trope. It is about knowing when to collaborate, and when to respectfully get out of the way.
Some may argue that the evolution of banks, retailers, and miners into technology players mirrors what has already happened between tech companies and telco-service providers. After all, software vendors have long partnered with telecommunications firms to deliver everything from cloud infrastructure to enterprise applications. But this comparison oversimplifies the reality of what’s unfolding.
Telcos were always first cousins to IT. Their core business has always been infrastructure-heavy and tech-adjacent. Their networks, data centres, and connectivity services positioned them naturally as platform enablers for enterprise IT. When Telstra began expanding its business beyond networks into software and services, it wasn’t reinventing itself, it was simply extending its existing role in the digital economy. The same applies to all the other global telco giants.
However, banks, retailers, and resource companies are fundamentally different. Their core businesses were never inherently about technology in the same way telcos have always been.
Commonwealth Bank is not just layering technology onto banking. It is becoming a platform provider in its own right, allowing third parties to build financial services on top of its infrastructure. Coles is not just using AI for internal efficiencies. It is developing commercial-grade analytics platforms that could be monetised beyond its own operations. Woodside is not simply automating mining. It is creating proprietary software solutions that might soon be licensable across the energy sector.
There’s also a stark difference in execution and impact. Telcos, for all their elegant narratives about transformation, from network fibre and towers to business applications, have rarely delivered at scale.
While Telstra has successfully repositioned itself as a digital services provider, it has not fundamentally disrupted or reshaped industries in the way banking, retail, and mining players are now achieving.
The imperative here is greater, sharper, and far more financially significant. There are billions of dollars at stake, not just in driving operational efficiencies but in redefining their entire industry positioning.
Am I being clear enough? This is not an adjacent business expansion. It is a strategic repositioning of their role within the technology ecosystem.
For PaaS providers, this moment represents both a threat and a strategic opening. Their largest enterprise customers are no longer just buying technology. They are becoming platform builders themselves. The real opportunity lies in reframing these enterprises not as customers, but as strategic partners. To stay relevant, PaaS vendors must embed themselves within enterprise-led innovation ecosystems, opening up partner models that were once reserved for ISVs and developers.
But this is more than just a natural expansion of enterprise IT capabilities. It is a structural reordering of the tech landscape. It challenges who gets to define architecture, set integration rules, and lead ecosystems. In this new reality, many PaaS vendors and ISVs have been slow to adjust, still operating as if they alone control the playbook. That era is ending.
What all this means is not that enterprises are taking control of their technology architecture for the first time, but that they are reclaiming it. In the early days of enterprise IT, large organisations invested heavily in defining their own architectures, simply because they had no choice. Technology was fragmented, and no integrator or platform vendor could offer a complete solution. Over time, as global SIs and powerful PaaS ecosystems emerged, much of that architectural power was outsourced. Enterprises became buyers of pre-packaged roadmaps, rather than authors of their own.
Now, as the platform landscape matures and composability becomes real, enterprises are once again positioned to take ownership. But doing so requires more than just tooling. It demands that organisations actively reassert architectural authority to shape their own standards, integration logic, governance models, and platform priorities. They must unlearn the habit of deferring to vendors and rediscover their capacity to lead.
So let’s say Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) is representative of the broader shift in how enterprises and platform providers collaborate. These initiatives aren’t just about scalable infrastructure. They depend on full-stack PaaS capabilities, from workflow automation to data orchestration and seamless third-party integration. Without a solid platform layer, the complexity of managing these ecosystems would become a barrier to growth, scale, and innovation.
In this model, PaaS providers are not just infrastructure vendors. They are still critical enablers of enterprise-led innovation, supplying the backbone that allows businesses to scale, integrate diverse technologies, and create entirely new ecosystems. By embedding themselves in these transformation journeys, PaaS providers don’t just stay relevant but become indispensable, ensuring that even enterprise-driven platforms continue to rely on their capabilities.
Rather than viewing Commonwealth Bank’s BaaS model as a competitive threat, a PaaS provider could see itself as the silent enabler, powering the bank’s expansion while securing its own recurring revenue and strategic influence. In this scenario, Commonwealth Bank is no longer just a customer. It’s a partner.
This shift demands a rethink.
PaaS providers would have to consider how to integrate mega-enterprises into their partner programs, treating them not as competitors, but as co-creators, ensuring they remain essential allies in the new platform economy. To do that they need to overcome the next roadblock. The existing SI Platinum Partners.
The emergence of partner-style enterprises as technology providers themselves challenges the traditional role of platinum-level partners like Accenture, Deloitte, and Tech Mahindra. These firms have long positioned themselves as integration specialists, managing platform customisation, implementation, and large-scale operations for enterprise clients.
But as more businesses pivot to take greater control of their own technology ecosystems, defining their own architectures and leveraging PaaS models, the influence of these integrators is shifting.
Their role can no longer be just about implementing and integrating. It will have to be about navigating a new power dynamic where enterprises and hyperscalers increasingly dictate the rules. This transformation is driven by a fundamental shift in power.
The End of 20th Century Style SI Dominance
For a generation now, system integrators have played a central role in shaping enterprise technology stacks, selecting platforms, and overseeing integrations. We all know that their influence is significant and extends beyond technical expertise to business considerations, often favouring technologies where they have certified resources, strong vendor partnerships, or commercial incentives. This allows them to steer architectural decisions under the guise of best practice, even when those choices are influenced as much by internal resourcing strategies as by client needs.
With PaaS I think some of that control will slip away. Very large enterprises will no longer just be technology consumers. As platform providers themselves, they will increasingly seek to set their own API standards, security models, and service governance. Meanwhile, hyperscalers and major PaaS vendors, that have solidified their dominance through the broad acceptance of “hybrid”, will increase in influence as to how ecosystems will function.
It’s a subtle shift, easy to overlook, but it marks a major realignment of architectural authority. The power to define enterprise technology architecture is no longer likely to sit with traditional system integrators, many of whom never fully moved into strategic business consulting. Instead, that influence is consolidating around two dominant forces: platform-owning enterprises and hyperscalers. The idea being that these players now have the leverage to define the architecture because they own the platforms or run the infrastructure.
For SIs, this will mean more than just a shift in technical responsibilities. It will require a structural change in how they operate. No longer able to freely choose technology stacks based on internal resource availability, they will have to go deeper with fewer platforms, embedding themselves within select ecosystems rather than maintaining broad, generalised capabilities.
The old model of playing across multiple vendors will need to give way to a more focused approach, where their value comes from helping enterprises optimise and orchestrate within more defined technology environments.
At the same time, the nature of integration itself has changed. The challenge is no longer just about stitching systems together. It is about ensuring enterprises can function as platform businesses. This requires expertise in platform governance, interoperability, and monetisation, helping companies manage developer ecosystems, ensure regulatory compliance, and continuously evolving their services.
Instead of defining the architecture, SIs will have to be better at enabling enterprises to operate their own platforms effectively, balancing the strategic priorities of their clients with the overarching influence of hyperscalers. It opens the door for a new kind of centre of excellence more focused on the extrinsic ecosystem and not internal service delivery.
This shift consolidates power at the platform level, leaving SIs with a choice to adapt by becoming orchestrators and governance enablers within these ecosystems, or risk being sidelined as more enterprises take ownership of their technology destiny.
Those that fail to evolve will find themselves with diminishing influence, as enterprises will need less help in building technology stacks and more help to navigate, optimise, and extract value from an ecosystem they no longer control.
One of the bottom lines here is that the shift to enterprise-owned platforms and hyperscaler-controlled ecosystems caps the ability of SIs to dictate technology choices and inflate costs through complexity. This also breaks the labour arbitrage model that has sustained SI profitability for decades.
The ability to charge ever-increasing day rates was never just about technical skill. It relied on exploiting inefficiencies. As IT environments grew more complex, system integrators became more indispensable. But that model is breaking down.
AI and automation are clearly replacing low-value integration work. Tasks that once required large offshore teams, like manual API integration, testing, and configuration, are now handled by AI-powered platforms. Enterprises need fewer billable hours when low-code tools, automated workflows, and managed services do most of the work.
At the same time, standardised PaaS offerings have reduced the need for bespoke engineering. Enterprises no longer have to solely depend on SIs to stitch together custom middleware or bridge fragmented systems. Instead, they can adopt pre-integrated, API-first platforms that simplify implementation. Rather than designing the architecture, integrators are now expected to work within an existing framework, which will limit their ability to sell high-margin services.
Meanwhile, many enterprises are bringing this capability in-house. As banks, retailers, and industrial companies evolve into platform builders, they will rely less on external integrators. They are already hiring their own architects and engineers, which directly undercuts the traditional SI model.
This shift marks the end of the unchecked day rate. Enterprises will still pay for real expertise, but not for bloated engagements that exist only to navigate unnecessary complexity. System integrators that fail to evolve beyond staff augmentation and manual build work will face falling margins and shrinking relevance.
As enterprise architectures consolidate around standard PaaS models, the space for expensive customisation narrows. SIs must either reinvent their role, by focusing on orchestration, governance, and continuous optimisation, or become commoditised service providers with little pricing power.
The change is structural. Day rates will come under pressure, and commercial models must shift from time-and-materials to outcome-based pricing, subscription-style services, or embedded roles within hyperscaler ecosystems. The industry can no longer justify escalating costs without delivering proportional value.
This is a long-overdue reckoning.
The combination of automation, standardisation, and enterprise self-sufficiency is ending a cycle of inefficiency that has lasted too long. And that’s a necessary step if the integration market is to take its next leap forward.
There is, however, a twist emerging within parts of the system integration industry. Certainly one that warrants scrutiny. As AI becomes central to enterprise transformation, some SIs are developing their own agentic AI solutions and proprietary automation platforms. On the surface, this looks like a bold shift toward innovation. But in practice, it often recreates the very dynamics that once made the integration market so inefficient.
These in-house AI tools are rarely open, modular, or portable. Instead, they introduce bespoke layers that only the SI can maintain, effectively rebuilding a dependency model under a new name. They are sold as accelerators but function more like anchors, keeping the SI embedded in long-term support arrangements under the guise of continuous innovation.
This approach doesn’t empower the enterprise. It reinscribes the same service-heavy economics that AI, low-code, and platform standardisation were supposed to dismantle. It’s a clever play, but it risks undermining trust. Enterprises that genuinely seek autonomy and platform maturity will see through it.
If SIs want to remain relevant in a world of composable infrastructure and AI-native operations, they must let go of the urge to control and instead focus on orchestration, governance, and enablement. Anything less is just another form of lock-in, only this time, disguised as intelligence.
A Reckoning, and a Choice
As I’ve said before, I’m not an advocate for the destruction of capital. PaaS providers should avoid forcing a break between enterprises and system integrators. Instead, they must take a balanced approach to integrating mega-enterprises into their ecosystems. One that respects both the shifting role of the enterprise and the continued relevance of trusted implementation partners.
This starts with creating more flexible partnership models that recognise large enterprises not only as customers, but as platform providers and ecosystem orchestrators in their own right. These organisations are no longer passive buyers of technology. They are actively shaping the environments in which PaaS vendors and integrators now operate.
For system integrators, this marks an inflection point. The market no longer rewards high-margin consulting engagements driven by labour arbitrage. Enterprises are focused on value, not volume, and AI is automating much of the routine integration work that once sustained the SI business model.
To stay relevant, integrators must evolve from selling labour to enabling scale. Their future lies in managing governance, compliance, and ecosystem complexity across multi-platform environments, not in staffing technical teams to complete repetitive tasks. There is very little that can’t be done today on PaaS that previously required armies of custom developers.
PaaS vendors must also acknowledge this transition and adjust their partner strategies accordingly. Rather than relying solely on traditional integrators to drive adoption, they need to invest in new forms of collaboration that prioritise platform enablement over implementation. This will require clearer role definitions to avoid conflict, ensuring that enterprises, PaaS providers, and integration partners each bring distinct value to the table.
A core part of this strategy will involve joint go-to-market efforts, where enterprises, PaaS vendors, and partners co-develop scalable solutions and unlock shared commercial opportunities. What may appear at first as a threat to traditional vendors is in fact a new kind of opportunity. The goal for organisations like Commonwealth Bank or Suncorp isn’t to displace existing partners, but to broaden the ecosystem and create room for shared growth. Dominance will be redefined. As it always is.
What’s needed now is not just a response to change, but leadership in a new era defined by enterprise-driven platforms. PaaS providers that can embrace and orchestrate this shift will shape the next phase of the platform economy and secure their place at the centre of the next wave of innovation.
Did you make it all the way to the end? Sorry, I know it was long, but these complex global inflection points only come along once every generation…