The most recent software paradigm has been SaaS - software as a service. Capex is distributed among all customers and opex is paid for through the subscription. This avoids the large upfront capex and provides easy cost and revenue projections for both sides of the transaction. The key to SaaS is that the software is maximally generic. Meaning is works well for the largest number of people. This necessitates making tough cuts on UX and functionality when they only benefit small parts of the userbase.

Vibe coding or LLM accelerated development is going to turn this on its head. Everyone will be able to afford custom software to fit their specific needs and preferences. Where Salesforce currently has 150,000 customers, imagine 150,000 customers all using their own customised CRM. The scope for software expansion is unbelievably large right now.

SaaS is not a new idea and has been renamed multiple times.

In the 70s, it was called "time-sharing". Instead of buying a mainframe, you got a CICS application instance on a mainframe and used that. (tangentially, spare time on these built-out nation-wide dialup-supported networks is what gave birth to CompuServe and GEnie).

In the dot-com era, it was called "application service providers". Salesforce and actually started in this era (1999). So did NetSuite. This was the first attempt to be browser-based but bandwidth and browsers sucked then.

I think PaaS is a more recent software paradigm, albeit a far less successful one.