Native vs. External Agents: The Depth-Breadth Trade-off in Enterprise AI
This is the third article in Arion Research's "Future Enterprise" series. Every major enterprise vendor now has an AI agent strategy, but the approaches diverge sharply. Some vendors are embedding agents deep inside their applications, giving them direct access to data models, business rules, and transaction logic. Others are building horizontal platforms where agents orchestrate across multiple applications from the outside. Each approach has structural advantages, and real limitations. This article examines the depth-breadth trade-off, explores where each model wins, and makes the case for a third path that combines native depth with open interoperability.
ChatGPT: From Chatbot to Application Platform
Users of ChatGPT see it as a conversational agent; a chatbot. You open a text box, type a question, and receive an answer. It's powerful, sometimes remarkably so, but the interaction model is simple: prompt in, response out. That mental model is about to shift dramatically.
The announcements at OpenAI's Dev Day 2025 signal something bigger than incremental improvements. ChatGPT is evolving from an interface into a substrate. From a place where you talk to AI, to a place where you build with AI. The new Apps SDK and AgentKit are turning ChatGPT into a runtime environment for applications and autonomous workflows.