The thirty-eighth episode of the podcast that you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts from and additionally in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). It's Matt and Alan this month, celebrating the 3rd birthday of the pod (even if the episode numbers don't exactly add up), talking Salesforce, Work Intelligence and M&A.

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: Salesforce Goes Headless

Starting off, Matt has remembered that it's the 3rd birthday of the pod, with the first episode being uploaded n the 19th April 2023 (just don't ask how come it's episode 38 when the pod has been running for 36 months). Alan has been in San Francisco at Salesforce TDX (the conference for Salesforce developers) and whilst he was there, he wrote a blog post about the announcements and Salesforce's technical progress, most notably the newly announced Headless 360. He explains the change in focus at the conference, from the core audience of Salesforce admins and Apex developers to increasingly opening up to developers that are not coming from a purely Salesforce background, in large part driven by Agentforce and Data 360. Matt points out that Headless 360 is an encapsulation of a technical approach, rather than a product and points to the 60+ MCP servers as the increase in potential complexity - as well as openness - for that extended developer community.

Topic 2: Work Intelligence 2026

Last month, we released the 4th edition of the Work Intelligence Market Analysis, covering the period 2026-2031 (it's available right away for Deep Analysis subscribers as part of their cache of content, it's also available for non subscribers for one off purchase). If you're not familiar with Work Intelligence, there's a free primer from 2022 that's free to download for everyone. Here Matt summarises some of the content in the report, the projected value of the markets and the other details available in the report. Alan points out that even though the concept is now a few years old, it's now clear that the market is aligning with the basis of the world that we described in that initial report. Matt talks about some of the market growth data and then mentions that he's recently published an addendum to the report, which compares our market projections year-on-year. Finally Matt has some scary information about M&A data that's contained in certain other market reports - not written by Deep Analysis - that we've come across. Then there's some kind of related "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" chat.

Topic 3: M&A(&AI)

Whilst we're thinking about M&A, Matt has decided to mention one of the many pieces of content that Deep Analysis publishes, but sometimes forget to tell you all about. One such item is the quarterly M&A round up for the unstructured data automation market (i.e. the part of the market in which we specialise); who bought who and what market dynamics can be observed. This is available to all Deep Analysis subscribers, who get to see all the deals; large and small. In passing Alan mentions his blog post celebrating OpenText's new CEO's first day at his desk. Matt and Alan then go on to discuss how di

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The thirty-seventh episode of the podcast you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts, and in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). Dan's back for an IDP special with Matt this month, focusing on the latest edition of the IDP Market Analysis and discussing this year's top trends.

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: Agentic AI Will Transform IDP

To kick off, Dan explains the background to the IDP Market Analysis - now in its fourth edition - and that it provides an overview of how the market is performing and how it's looking towards the future, and, in the process, uncovers trends from both vendors and customers alike. Dan goes on to explain that the increase in the use of agents - now 66% of vendors saying that they are present in their product set - is helping those vendors move beyond being a single part of a pipeline process and to take on larger parts of those processes (and in the process, increase their potential for value generation). Dan also points out that 80% of vendors are now using foundation LLMs in their products; a state of affairs he predicted and is now pleased to be able to point to as a fact.

Topic 2: IDP Is the Low-Hanging Fruit for ROI

The second trend from the report is that IDP is ROI gold. Dan points out that people forget the I in IDP really means AI (which has been around much longer than the transformers that underpin LLMs) and also reminds people that IDP's transactional nature makes it well-suited to finding investment models that generate returns. Using data from our 2025 IDP MMI survey, Dan discussed how reducing processing time is the biggest measurement that customers use for IDP project success (51%), with straight-through processing success - where processes don't require human intervention, the long-time holy grail for IDP - at 47%. Indeed, Dan points out that the simplest way for anyone to find a quick ROI for AI in their organization is to look at IPD projects, especially as Matt points out, transactionally, these processes are often mature, well-understood, and have known cost bases. Finally, Dan points out that there's a potential reckoning coming as true LLM pricing becomes clear once any price discounting or token bundling from the foundation model providers ends.

Topic 3: Mo’ Projects? Mo’ IDP!

Cheating a little bit as Dan has 4 trends in his report, but we only ever have 3 topics on the pod, Matt's smooshed 2 of them together as "Mo' Projects? Mo' IDP!"; firstly, looking at the apparent boom in IDP projects, first identified within that 2025 MMI research, where that boom is largely made up of replacement projects for previous IDP platforms (legacy beware!). Matt points out that the double-digit growth projected for IDP through the analysis period should be contrasted with general IT inflation running at 5%; it's a strongly growing market segment. The second part of this topic is that there are more IDP vendors than ever; Dan's now managing a database of 500 individual vendors at the time of recording. The report itself has 24% more vendors than the 2024 edition and a number of interesting insights into revenue trends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_eCUOJUujY

Related Links for Series 5 Episode 3
The announcement blog post for the new IDP Market Analysis and the page where the report can be purchased (Deep Analysis customers receive this as part of their annual subscription).
Our 2026 Predictions download (in case you missed it).
The two-part (free) agents reports: AI Agents: What They Are, How They Work, and Where Organizations Might Best Use Them, and AI Agents Part 2: The Evolution from Single Systems to Complex Process Orchestration
Pod Episode Series 4, Episode 9, where Matt and Dan discuss the MMI IDP survey in detail.

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30 mins of biting the hand that feeds us - demystifying and debunking the enterprise software market.

The thirty-sixth (not the thirty-fifth, as Matt says) episode of the podcast you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts, and in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). Matt and Alan are in the chairs, and they catch up on some recent blog posts on how software isn't dead (again), how crazy promises on AI's future are not helping things, and celebrate that Deep Analysis is now in its 10th year of operation.

In this month’s episode:

Software is Dead. Again.

It's been a year, but apparently software is deal again. And only 12 months since it was last dead. Here, Alan and Matt discuss the recent blog post "The 'Death of SaaS' Narrative is a Luxury the Enterprise Cannot Afford" that Alan posted in response to a lot of discussion about how current models for procuring software are over, and also, whilst we were there, software licensing is over too. The reality, of course, is somewhat different, and having discussed this, they touch on Matt's recent post "Beware the promises made by blank sheets of paper," where there are reminders that enterprises are complicated, and also, as a result, some companies are choosing to hold AI at the perimeter to keep things simple.

Stupid AI Predictions

Noting that software vendors usually rely on industry analysts to make really dumb predictions, but this time it's Microsoft (again). In an interview with the FT, head of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman suggested that many while-collar roles will be entirely automated by AI in 12 to 18 months. Matt in particularly is very annoyed by this suggestion, describing it as "deeply dishonest", and then explaining why. He also points out that Suleyman's hiring was noted in a previous blog post of his from almost 2 years ago, in which he also suggested watching the "cash at hand" figure for software vendors. That seems to be now attracting a bit more attention. Finally, he also points out that Jad Tarifi of Integral AI has said some equally dumb things, such as that doctors (or lawyers) shouldn't be trained because AI will overtake their knowledge during training.

Deep Analysis is (almost) 10

Finally, Alan's written about how Deep Analysis is in its 10th year of operation, some of the areas where we've led thinking ahead of the game, and why we do things the way we do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darqcAv-Agw

Related Links for Series 5 Episode 2
Alan's blog post "The 'Death of SaaS' Narrative is a Luxury the Enterprise Cannot Afford".
Matt's accompanying blog post: "Beware the promises made by blank sheets of paper."
The FT interview with Mustafa Suleyman (subscription required)
"Ex–Googler says degrees in law and medicine are

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