At Strategic Shift 2025, experts explained why SaaS, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain are leading the next wave of business transformation. The message was loud and clear—if your business isn’t moving to the cloud, using AI to boost productivity, or exploring blockchain for trust and security, you’re already behind.
SaaS, or Software as a Service, is at the center of this shift. It’s changing how companies of all sizes run their operations, from startups to big enterprises. “Businesses need to shift to SaaS right now because of a number of reasons,” said Bo Lundqvist, President of Retail Associates. “One, cost. Costs of on-premises is going to go right up… because tech companies are going to drive it up. Hardware, electricity, scarcity of people, all that’s going to go up. So maintaining is going to be expensive.”
He added, “New innovation. It is not going to happen on-premises. Innovation will happen in [the] cloud. So if you want your business to be at the forefront of taking advantage of technology… it’s happening today. If you want to be a productive company, on-prem is not the place.”
Steven Davis, Chairman of the Data Center Association of the Philippines, also stressed the value of SaaS: “SaaS is evolving on its own. It’s got its own natural progression. It has companies doing your business and tools for you right from day one.”
But the shift isn’t just about software. Blockchain is stepping up as a powerful layer in today’s cloud-based systems. “Blockchain’s a very unique tool,” said Davis. “I’ve always been a big fan of it. One, the back-end processing, the amount of time, effort, and money you can save by leveraging blockchain.”
He also pointed to its strength in cybersecurity. “Security-wise, it’s inherently secure because it’s about every piece of it and all the hexadecimal encryption that’s running through it. How do you get through it?”
And when SaaS meet blockchain? Davis said, “With software as a service related back to blockchain… when you’re running a true global system, multi-user, multi-country, cross borders across the world… and you’re trying to manage them as a single user base… that’s where it really comes in as a handy tool.”
With Southeast Asia’s cloud adoption accelerating, the time to act is now. The key takeaway here? Businesses need the cloud and the tools built on top of it to stay competitive.
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