Writing

The first edition of a new weekly series on agentic work platforms. This week the big three stopped selling capability and started selling control: OpenAI Presence, cryptographic agent identity in Gemini Enterprise, and governed publishing in Microsoft Copilot.

In a single week, 6sense put its intelligence behind MCP, Iterable pulled live data into journeys, and Adobe Journey Optimizer shipped both. Three vendors, one move: the line between knowing the customer and acting on them is giving way.

DXP emerged when websites became complex digital experiences and the CMS was no longer enough. Then the category expanded until it began to describe almost the entire stack.

DAM began as a searchable library for digital files. It became the governance and distribution layer for assets moving across brands, markets, channels and AI-assisted content operations.

A quiet product week still moved a boundary: paid-media execution is being pulled closer to engagement and automation platforms, while more of the campaign chain is being operated through agentic interfaces. Why that is an architecture question, not a feature one.

MarTech platform decisions are shaped by four gravitational forces: the experience suite, the CRM, the enterprise data layer and the engagement runtime. Understanding which gravity should dominate is more useful than comparing feature lists.

CMS began as a way to publish web pages without editing HTML. It became the structured content layer behind websites, applications, channels and, increasingly, AI agents.

One reusable test for any agentic or AI marketing claim: does it improve operational reality under governance, or is it a demo?

Eight platforms, one pattern: an interim synthesis where different CEP physics converge on the same governance-versus-activation failure mode.