The next big AI battleground will be centered on software for managing agents, helping businesses handle the growing suite of AI agents they’re using from different providers, as we reported today. On that front, the older enterprise software firms feel they have advantages over OpenAI and Anthropic.

That advantage boils down to software firms’ intimate knowledge of customers’ business processes, which software executives think will be tough for the startups to match. That’s especially true for software that companies use to manage the steps involved in common tasks like processing invoices and setting up new employees, known as “workflows.”

In interviews this week with ServiceNow and Atlassian, executives highlighted their firms’ deep roots in this area and said this knowledge is crucial for agents to work properly.

The focus on agent-management software follows OpenAI unveiling a preview version of its product, called Frontier, last week. In its announcement, OpenAI implied that Frontier could become the primary way companies use software, in essence by directing AI agents through the ChatGPT interface to use a variety of other companies’ apps, such as for HR, IT, or sales tasks.

Many established enterprise software companies saw Frontier as signaling OpenAI’s intention to usurp those companies’ relationships with customers, multiple software salespeople tell us.

Frontier is limited to a small group of large customers, so it’s not clear how aggressively OpenAI will pitch the product to customers that are using its AI models and other products. But cloud database provider Snowflake, which recently inked a $200 million deal to use OpenAI’s models and other products, and sells a similar product, thinks customers should choose their own management software.