Ciphix announces a new strategic direction, fully committing to agentic application development: building enterprise-grade applications using artificial intelligence (AI). While many organisations are experimenting with AI, bringing these applications into production remains a challenge. This is where Ciphix sees a growing demand in the market: solutions that operate at scale within existing IT landscapes. According to the company, agentic application development will fundamentally change how organisations build software.

Not ‘vibe coding’, but agentic application development

The rise of ‘vibe coding’ – rapidly building applications with AI based on simple prompts – makes it possible to develop software in a fraction of the time it previously took. However, this approach is often used as a quick fix, without sufficient attention to security, scalability, and maintainability.

As a result, many organisations face the same challenge: building something is now relatively easy, but ensuring those applications are secure, reliable at scale, and well-integrated with existing systems is far more complex. In practice, many AI pilots remain stuck in the experimental phase, while the pressure to move into production continues to grow. This is especially true for organisations with complex IT landscapes and legacy systems.

This hesitation is not without reason. Using AI for business-critical applications introduces real risks. Without a solid foundation – including architecture, data security, and application management – these solutions can lead to errors, security vulnerabilities, and systems that are difficult to adapt or maintain. What starts as a quick solution can quickly turn into a new problem. At the same time, when applied correctly, the same technology offers unprecedented speed and flexibility. The difference lies in the foundation.

This phase marks a turning point. Where ‘vibe coding’ focuses on speed and experimentation, there is a growing need for a mature approach suitable for business-critical processes and complex IT environments. Ciphix therefore prefers the term agentic application development: an approach where AI is applied within the frameworks required to build and manage enterprise-level applications.

Making this possible requires a combination of disciplines. Most specialists only cover one part of the puzzle: application development, automation, integration, or AI. Ciphix brings all of these together in one end-to-end team. No handovers between specialists, no loss of context, and a single point of contact who understands both the business challenge and the technical complexity.

From experiment to production environment

Agentic application development also changes how organisations view software. The traditional trade-off between building in-house and buying standard software is shifting. Where organisations have long relied on SaaS solutions, there is now room to build tailored applications faster and more precisely. This provides greater flexibility and control over the software landscape, while reducing dependency on standard solutions and associated licensing costs.

It is precisely the combination of AI with expertise in architecture, governance, and complex IT environments that makes the difference between an experiment and a solution that works at scale. Applications for areas such as project planning or sales processes can now be rebuilt in a short time using AI, often at significantly lower cost. At the same time, the demand for support in bringing these applications into production is increasing, as this is where complexity intensifies.

“The speed of innovation is currently unprecedented,” says Marilou van Doorn, CEO of Ciphix. “We’ve seen waves before – low-code, RPA, iPaaS – but what’s happening with AI is on a completely different scale. The barrier to building applications is dropping rapidly, and that changes everything. But speed without a solid foundation is not an advantage, it’s a risk. The difference between a pilot and a scalable solution is not the technology itself. It’s the people who understand what they are building and why. And that’s exactly where Ciphix makes the difference.”

Building on existing strengths

This new direction builds on Ciphix’s existing approach, where organisations are supported from strategy through to implementation and continuous development. This often involves companies with significant legacy systems looking to modernise but struggling with complexity.

The core of this approach remains unchanged: Ciphix always starts with identifying the right problem, works closely with the client, and then makes a well-informed decision between building or buying. This begins with Sprint 0: a discovery phase where the real problem is defined before a single line of code is written.

Ciphix sees agentic application development as the new standard, enabling organisations to become less dependent on traditional SaaS solutions and take greater control over their own software development. With this direction, the company positions itself as the partner that enables this transition to production within complex enterprise environments.