Platform, Intellectual Property Ecosystem, Action-Based Pricing: Salesforce Reinvents Software as a Service for the Agentic Era

This IDC Market Note analyzes Salesforce's Agentforce strategy and the evolving AI-powered ecosystem across Southeast Asia and the broader Asia/Pacific region. The assessment reflects announcements made during the Salesforce Agentforce World Tour Singapore on May 15, 2025 and Salesforce's June 2025 flexible pricing launch. These developments show how Salesforce is redefining software as a service (SaaS) for the agentic era in three areas: shifting from application stack to platform-centric, application programming interface (API)-first orchestration in technology, dropping per-conversations pricing in favor of action-based credits for pricing, and encouraging partners to develop prepackaged intellectual properties and alliances over project-based time and material billing. "The SaaS model is changing. Salesforce's initiatives foretell a new world of agentic AI in which technology vendors and SPs must relook how technology is built, priced, and sold," says Lawrence Cheok, associate research director for Asia/Pacific (including Japan) digital business and AI transformation strategies, IDC Asia/Pacific.