software PM market analysis — 2026-10-15

Enterprise software demand is holding up, but the evidence this session points to a widening gap between spending and realised value rather than a clean growth story. AgentsPop frames AI features as a new recurring-revenue layer inside enterprise software, while cautioning that headline licence spending can overstate how much of that capacity customers actually put to use. Arcade makes a related point about workflow automation: the harder problem is not initial adoption but scaling pilots into production deployments that hold up operationally.

Supply-chain software is a steadier pocket of demand, according to Straits Research, as cloud migration and the push for real-time visibility keep buyers engaged. The same coverage notes that implementation cost, security requirements, and data-privacy concerns continue to slow purchasing cycles, which tempers the growth case rather than reversing it. Activepieces describes workflow vendors responding to this friction by broadening integrations and adding no-code tooling, self-hosting, and governance controls, a competitive shift that looks more defensive than opportunistic.

Taken together, the session’s sources describe a sector where structural demand is intact but execution risk is doing most of the talking. The near-term signal to watch is whether AI and workflow spending converts into measured usage and renewal quality, rather than further expansion of licence counts alone.