Most access control programs are built around getting people in. New starters get a laptop, an identity, a set of groups and a list of applications on day one, usually through a checklist that HR and IT have tuned for years. Getting people out gets far less attention. The result is predictable: former employees, contractors and interns who still have working access weeks or months after they left, to systems nobody remembered they had.

The headline numbers were large enough to move a $29 billion company 37% in two sessions. Total revenue of $1.766 billion, up 28% against a $1.66 billion consensus. Adjusted EPS of $1.87 against $1.50. Cloud revenue of $1.213 billion, up 31%, with growth accelerating rather than decaying. GAAP operating income of $211 million against a $28 million loss a year earlier. None of that is the number worth anchoring on.

Four enterprise software franchises that defined the last software decade entered the summer of 2026 carrying the same wound. Salesforce trades near $152, down roughly a third on the year and off 38% from where it stood twelve months ago. ServiceNow, having executed a five-for-one split in December, changes hands around $95 after surrendering more than half its value from the 2025 peak. Atlassian sits in the low $80s, down some 45% year to date and roughly 74% off its one-year high. Monday.com, the smallest of the group, has lost about 73% over a year and trades in the mid-$60s against a 52-week high near $317.

The average organization with 500 to 1,000 employees is running between 100 and 200 SaaS applications. A fraction of those are managed by IT. The rest were procured by individual departments, teams, and employees using corporate credit cards, expense reports, and in some cases personal cards that get reimbursed. The finance team knows about the ones with purchase orders. The IT team knows about the ones that went through the security review queue. Nobody knows about all of them.

Enterprise software procurement moves at a pace that the software it is trying to purchase has long since left behind. The average procurement cycle for a mid-market enterprise software purchase — from initial vendor identification to signed contract — runs between four and nine months. The software category the procurement team is evaluating will have shipped multiple major releases during that period. The requirements documentation that anchored the evaluation will have drifted from what the business actually needs. The vendor selected may have been acquired.