Beyond CRUD: Why Satya Nadella Thinks Business Apps Are Due for Extinction

Image generated by author to illustrate the topic at hand

As Microsoft bets big on AI agents, the era of traditional business applications may be quietly coming to an end.

“The age of apps is over,” Satya Nadella recently hinted, dismissing the world’s reliance on CRUD-based software — those business tools we’ve quietly used for decades.

Instead, he envisions a future run by intelligent agents that operate across systems, unbound by static user interfaces or hard-coded logic.

But what does this actually mean — and is it real or just rhetoric?

What Is CRUD, and Why Does It Matter?

CRUD is not a buzzword — it’s the quiet backbone of enterprise software. It stands for Create, Read, Update, Delete. Think of any business app — inventory management, HR platforms, payroll, customer databases.

What do they do? They store data, let you look it up, make changes, and sometimes remove it. That’s CRUD in action.

For decades, CRUD apps have formed the architecture of how businesses handle operations. Most are rigid, logic-driven systems where workflows are embedded in forms and tables. And they’ve worked — until now.

Nadella’s Critique: The App is the Bottleneck