The largest enterprise application vendors are using their entrenched positions among customers to end discounting and push high-margin AI products, an analysis by Forrester Research has warned.

A study of recent Q2 2025 earnings announcements by the tech research biz found the message from major enterprise software players was clear: “The era of experimentation is over, and the era of monetisation has begun,” the report states.

Vendors under the microscope in the study include Oracle, SAP, Workday, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and Salesforce. The analysis found that the promise of weaving AI agents into user workflows – a plan common among vendors – would only be fulfilled if organisations are also willing to invest in “the unglamorous work of process redesign.”

“The barrier they create is less about the AI’s intelligence and more about the monumental organisational effort to retrain your workforce on new workflows,” Forrester adds.

But it comes at a cost. Adopting such a strategy “dramatically increases vendor lock-in and the strategic risk of your choice,” the analyst warns. Vendors are attempting to “re-bundle” their products as they encourage customers to view their collection of products as a “platform of platforms.”

For example, SAP told investors that it was shifting from a supplier of on-prem enterprise applications to a suite of SaaS and cloud services. In 2020, then CFO Luka Mucic said the move was “increasing customer lifetime revenue” with the subscription model and not only providing software and support services, but also the IT infrastructure and operational services in many cases. “We are effectively expanding our share of the wallet,” Mucic said.

Forrester has warned tech buyers that the bundling process is standard among enterprise software vendors of SAP’s scale.

“This is a vendor-led campaign to capture the highest percentage of your technology budget,” the report says. “While consolidating to a primary platform can yield efficiencies, it also concentrates risk and neuters your negotiation leverage. Your next major software decision is a bet on a single vendor’s security posture, pricing model, and innovation capacity for the next decade.”

The research found that Oracle’s most recent results showed Big Red was winning with its strategy of pushing both Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and its Oracle Cloud Applications business, under the Fusion branding.

“Oracle’s focus is to tighten the integration between OCI and Fusion Apps, enabling customers to run mission-critical workloads and AI services in a secure, high-performance environment. The narrative of a complete, integrated cloud from infrastructure to applications is compelling for CIOs who seek to reduce complexity. However, this ‘one-stop shop’ approach represents a strategic trade-off,” the study adds.

“Before committing to a wall-to-wall Oracle stack, you must perform rigorous due diligence on data portability and multi-cloud integration capabilities; most importantly, you must negotiate contractual protection against future uncompetitive pricing and commercial inflexibility.”

Observers might note that the latter part is easier said than done. Across the board, enterprise software vendors are trying to embed AI agents in their products. But it comes with a commercial trade-off.

For example, last year, while mulling the charging model for AI, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff answered investor concerns that the number of per-seat licenses might fall as the CRM giant’s customers use AI to cut headcount. As he mooted charging $2 per AI agent conversation, he assured investors it would be “a very high margin opportunity” for Salesforce.

Forrester says it saw a similar trend across enterprise application providers. “Vendors are leveraging their entrenched positions to end discounting and push high-margin AI SKUs,” the report claims. “A best-practice response to this is implementing a rigorous FinOps practice to manage consumption, demand transparent pricing, and build business cases based on tangible outcomes, not vendor promises.”

It’s not just software vendors that see AI as an opportunity to skew commercial arrangements. In February, distributor data from research firm Context showed Microsoft Copilot+ PCs were priced 57 percent higher than the average price of a notebook across Europe in the final three months of 2024. That’s €1,120 ($1,160) versus €712 ($738). The research also noted weak demand for AI-enhanced PCs.