The Harness Is the Company

The article argues that SaaS companies are evolving into “harness” businesses, where AI agents plus surrounding context, integrations, workflows, and human review loops become the real production engine. For CIOs and technology leaders, the strategic implication is that competitive advantage will increasingly come from designing and operating the AI harness itself—how it captures domain knowledge, embeds governance, routes work to human experts, and accelerates delivery—rather than from buying generic point tools. IT organizations will need to treat this harness as core infrastructure and a source of differentiation, not just automation software, because it will shape trust, speed, feedback loops, and institutional memory.