Intelligence above the tools

First, “the intelligence that orchestrates how multiple systems are used together” already exists, just being the user nowadays. Second, I still believe APIs should be the solid technological basis for systems being “connected” and – other than in the past – most modern providers seem to be supportive of this concept. Third, switching between 5 tools with 5 different UIs to complete one task is not a great experience (at least for a human user). In a more short-term progress, some of those tools/features might become integrated in existing main platforms, some automated in a more “classic” deterministic way and yes, who knows, some orchestrated by agents, all together providing a better, more harmonized user experience. Regarding agents there are still some hurdles like the probabilistic nature of the technology, inference costs and how to reliably solve authorization/delegated authority.

Overall, for good software companies there will be no huge difference, they always consider their solutions as a tool for a purpose, switching to better tools whenever technology makes them available. As they say, fall in love with the problem, not any specific solution.

And for hotels it doesn’t matter that much either, because even when agents become “the intelligence that orchestrates how multiple systems are used together” anytime soon, success will be defined by the intelligence above this intelligence (“the real competitive layer”), being the management. SW is a tool, hopefully supporting the final user as well as possible and better than today, but still only a tool. My guess would be this is still true in five years from now. However, whenever I start a sentence with "In five years from now ..." it usually means I have no f.... idea.