Intelligent Applications

By 2029, 50% of new applications will harness AI to create personalized, adaptive user interfaces, a dramatic increase from less than 15% in 2024. Intelligent applications will therefore be a key focus at Gartner Application and Innovation Business Solutions Summit 2025!

CRM, digital workplace and ERP applications are undergoing a change in purpose, form and function not seen since the advent of SaaS applications 25 years ago. Applications are no longer monoliths. Algorithms, agents and bots increasingly perform “work” on behalf of end users. Bringing intelligence into applications enables them to work autonomously across a wider range of scenarios with elevated quality and productivity, and reduced risk. Integrated intelligence can also support decision-making processes alongside transactional processes.

Watch our session on the ‘Next generation of Enterprise Applications: Transforming the way we work’ where Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, Stephen Emmott discussed how you can create a modern application portfolio without redesigning the entire stack and buying more technology.

The transformation to intelligent applications is led by the following interdependent design principles:

1. Adaptive experience: This ensures that the application can adapt to an individual’s preferred way of working, and it can adapt to what the user is doing and any challenges they might encounter.
2. Embedded intelligence: Embedded semantic engines, machine learning and generative AI enables the application to process the prompts and determine how best to support the request.
3. Autonomous orchestration: This principle enables intelligent applications to implement the processes, workflows and integrations to get the work done. 
4. Connected data: This is the practice of using data fabric to collect and analyze transactional data and metadata, in order to support autonomous orchestration, adaptive experience, and embedded intelligence. 
5. Composable architecture: Composable architecture requires that essential application capabilities are API-enabled. In an advanced implementation, all functionality within all applications is accessible via APIs — that is, API-first design.

Intelligent applications are augmented with AI and infused with data from transactions and external sources. They learn from usage patterns, transactional data, and inferred rules.  This optimizes workflows, processes, and user experience, resulting in more autonomous process execution and business intelligence.

In 2024, we had a track dedicated to designing intelligent applications strategy and in 2025, we will build on this with our Track B: Enabling Future-Proof Enterprise Application Strategies and our Track D: Automating and Integrating Applications. Sample sessions inclue:

• 10 Best Practices to Get Your Enterprise Process Automation Initiative Back on Track
• Counterintelligence - Assessing AI Agents, Their Use Cases, Platforms and Risks
• Ask the Expert: To Build or Buy GenAI Assistants and Agents: That is the Question