As LLMs get more useful for software creation and maintenance we could reach a point where companies only buy AI appliances that create and maintain software and data for the company. These appliances would build software that serves the business needs and make changes to the software as the business needs change over time.

Imagine running a business that does plumbing and you need software for your operations: accounting (all companies need this), scheduling, human resources functions (heh, assuming you employ people vs buying robots). What if one could buy a software appliance where one described their business to and it created all the software they needed, migrated data off of old systems and managed itself (e.g. ordered replacement hardware as it wore out)?

A cluster of appliance devices that have enough compute and storage to run the AI and the software it creates and operates could be enough to run such software given enough redundancy. The appliance would run everything local or rented data center space or both. Once AI agentic software creation is autonomous enough this should be possible. Given agentic software tools like windsurf, cursor and other tools combined with local LLMs, this might actually be possible today if not very soon.

The key to enabling this is the cost structure of business software. Once the total cost of ownership goes below the current model for each business then businesses will migrate to the new business model.