Let’s be clear: the future of information management isn’t about managing—it’s about proactively leveraging it. We’re entering an era where the old rules no longer apply. The explosion of SaaS apps, content formats, and AI agents isn’t a trend—it’s a reckoning. And if your organization isn’t ready to evolve, it’s already behind.

The Sprawl Is Real—and It’s Not Slowing Down
SaaS sprawl is out of control. Cloud service providers have made it frictionless to spin up apps, and enterprises are addicted to speed. But with every new app comes another silo, another identity, another governance headache. The question isn’t “how many apps do we have?”—it’s “how many do we actually control?”

Content sprawl is even more insidious. Images, videos, texts, chats, device logs—content is everywhere, all the time. It’s not just about volume; it’s about velocity and variety. Your teams need access to the right content, in the right format, at the right moment. Anything less is a bottleneck.

Agent sprawl is the newest disruptor. Every vendor is launching AI agents—tiny, skill-specific bots designed to do one thing well. Forget monolithic apps. The future is modular, intelligent, and hyper-specialized. But with this comes chaos: how do these agents talk to each other? Who governs them? Who validates their decisions? In the past, you used to search on Google. Now you chat with a bot, except in this case, you are not clicking on a blue link, but actually storing information from the chat (an answer, summary, document etc.) which becomes persistent, searchable, indexable, editable. It creates a new type of information which wouldn't have existed if it weren't for GenAI. However, this creates even more of an issue in information sprawl. So how do you solve this at scale?

Every Company Is Now an Information Company
This isn’t optional. If you’re not treating information as your core asset and intellectual property, you’re not in business — you’re in denial. Yesterday’s model was a data warehouse: store, retrieve, repeat. Today’s model is an information layered with AI agents that can operate under the strict mandates of industry compliance and regulations, sovereign cloud and AI, and zero-trust security.
You don’t just need access to data—you need actionable intelligence. And that means building platforms that are secure, compliant, and fast. Because in the age of AI, velocity wins.

Why Technologists Must Wake Up
The old paradigm was structured databases and business apps—ERP, CRM, ESM—anchored in identity. It was neat, predictable, and increasingly irrelevant.

The modern paradigm is messy and powerful: APIs, headless experiences, metadata sharing, and encrypted data in motion. It’s about componentized information management that fuels embedded experiences across every touchpoint.

The next paradigm? It’s revolutionary. Cloud + Security + AI converge into an information fabric—a data cloud where agents like Aviator, Joule, and Copilot operate autonomously. Applications fade into the background. What matters is the governance of decisions, the validity of insights, and the protocols by which agents interact.

OpenText’s Roadmap: Built for the Brave

• Horizon 1: Have a Conversation with Your Data as AI becomes the new UI. Structured and unstructured data unite.  You don’t search—you converse.  You don’t browse—you summarize.  You don’t guess—you know with Aviator.
• Horizon 2: Automate Cross Functional Collaboration as agents connect finance, HR, procurement, and support and interact to make informed decisions. Manual work disappears when organizational silos can be broken down and workflows scale with the right enterprise parameters and permissions.  Aviator Studio (coming soon) will let you build your own automation army.
• Horizon 3: Unleash the Limitless Digital Workforce where every knowledge worker gets a digital entourage. Governance spans agents and ecosystems. Models train themselves. The interface becomes irrelevant—it’s all about data, skills, and action. Aviator Model Service (coming soon) will make it secure, scalable, and cost-effective—in the cloud and on-prem if you want it.

The Bottom Line

At OpenText, we’re building a trusted, secure AI platform for information. Our innovation agenda is simple: turn information into secure action through digital knowledge workers. This is how we bring out the best in every organization—by empowering individuals to see, shape, and act on information in ways they never imagined.

The future isn’t coming. It’s here. Are you ready to lead it?

The post Charting the Future of Information Management: The End of Applications as We Know Them appeared first on OpenText Blogs.