Hace algunas semanas publicamos un post titulado: “Internet Startups: ¿Se olvidan del Sector Enterprise?”. En el argumentabamos que las startups estan en su mayoria concentrandose en desarrollar productos y servicios al consumidor, y estan pasando de largo aquellos orientados al mercado “enterprise”, que definimos como el de medianas y grandes organizaciones privadas o de gobierno (excluyendo las PyMEs en esta categoria). En dicha contribucion explicabamos que solo el mercado Enterprise de Tecnologias de Informacion tiene un valor de $1.8 trillones de dolares (1.8 millones de millones de dolares) y esta proximo a sufrir disrupciones que ocurren cada dos o tres decadas.
En el mes de Enero del 2012 fue publicado un articulo (“Five Myths of the Enterprise Startup”) en Techcrunch donde Aaron Levie, co-fundador y CEO de Box.net, una exitosa startup de almacenamiento de datos y colaboracion enfocada al mercado enterprise, explica como principalmente por la ola tecnologica del computo en la nube (sugerimos leer nuestro posts sobre Cloud Computing, Parte 1 y Parte 2) se estan dando las condiciones para que las barreras de entrada hacia este mercado tan interesante y lucrativo, se esten colapsando.
Nota: Ofrecemos a continuacion un resumen del articulo, que se mantuvo en ingles para no distorsionar el sentido del autor.
Myth #1: There’s no sizzle in enterprise software
If the consumer internet is technology’s Hollywood, then enterprise software is its Waterworks (famosa fabrica americana de equipos para baños, cocinas y plomeria). Either the services are irrelevant to us individuals, or the problems being solved are relatively esoteric, like software that helps you get better performance from your servers (oops, that turned into a $40B business). But the cloud takes the category mainstream, letting us all participate in this world of enterprise software, and meaningfully changing how we work and communicate. Enterprise software today is home to far more interesting rivalries than the battle for check-ins, or ‘likes’ vs. ‘+1s’. For instance: who’s going to dominate the enterprise email wars as they move to the cloud? A land grab for most other markets is quickly emerging, with ‘cloud’ spending broadly estimated to become $149 billion dollars by 2015.
Myth #2: There’s no scale in enterprise software companies
Enterprise software is still mistakenly seen as a category defined by niche markets, extremely long paths to reach customers, and wildly expensive sales cycles. But the shift to the cloud explodes this model, as software is now available instantly to nearly every business in the world. And getting to them is far easier than ever before.
Without having to aim a direct sales force at a particular segment, you can quickly analyze and optimize for areas where adoption is happening organically, instead of having to laboriously (or blindly) chase down customers. And with 500 million+ information workers worldwide, the question is not “is there scale?” but rather “how do you get to scale, quickly?” Freemium, open source, and viral enterprise applications are the new distribution models.
Myth #3: IT organizations are slow or difficult to work with
The CIO´s job is to care for and manage the security, integration, maintenance, deployment, management, and support of a wide range of technology. With careers on the line for every new piece of software introduced, their interest in carefully vetting (user translation: slowly adopting) solutions is more than justified.
But after spending the past few decades dealing with delayed roll-outs, over-budget projects, and unhappy users, IT departments have had enough. This is why they are radically speeding up the implementation process, and cloud solutions and startups are benefiting disproportionally. Major corporations like Procter and Gamble have created IT groups charged with piloting emerging technologies to solve problems that didn’t even exist (or simply couldn’t be solved) a few years ago.
Many of the Fortune 500 are embracing a “bring your own device” to work mentality and IT model, allowing individuals to choose their own hardware and software, greatly accelerating the adoption of cutting-edge technologies. The implications of this change are profound, as it completely rejiggers the existing information technology architecture of most organizations—from security, to apps, to the content on these devices, few existing solutions adequately solve our future problems.
Myth #4: It’s impossible to compete with Microsoft and Oracle
The biggest hurdle to starting an enterprise software company, or securing the funding needed to start one, has long been the (once justified) fear that Microsoft, Oracle, or some other giant could easily prevent you from getting to scale. As these players ‘controlled’ the underlying technology platforms and distribution channels, the expectation was that you’d be bought by them at best, and brutally crushed at worst.
Increasingly some of the world’s largest enterprises are going out of their way to find solutions not delivered from the big players, instead looking exclusively for solutions from unencumbered, independent startups. They no longer want to instruct their traditional vendors about market directions, or deal with the conflicting interests of their providers (why doesn’t Microsoft build for Android and vice-versa). Further, most enterprises are either over-served by existing solutions’ complexity, or underserved in the areas that are most important today: mobility, social, ease of use, speed, etc.
Myth #5: You can’t innovate in the enterprise
Chris Dixon (un famoso inversionista angel de los EUA) reminds us that enterprise SaaS gives users greater influence over technology adoption, leading to products that are built to be used, not sold.
This shift has dramatic implications for enterprise innovation: building to drive real user and business value, not to produce a more appealing white paper. Software like Yammer, Do, Asana, Zendesk, and GoodData are all user-introduced services, which means they’ll only see adoption if they’re solving real problems, consistently. Unlike traditional enterprise “systems of record,” tools today get tossed out if their utility wanes.
Gartner bets that 2012 will be about “the convergence of cloud, social, mobile and information into a unified set of forces shaping almost every IT-related decision.” Industry jargon aside, these innovations, and their accompanying high-growth markets, will be dominated by enterprise software companies that didn’t exist a decade ago.
Resumen de la entrevista a Aaron Levie:
1) Hay dos fuerzas muy poderosas que estan poniendo de cabeza a los CIOs (Chief Information Officers) de las organizaciones medianas y grandes:
- el cloud computing les quita el control de los usuarios y las aplicaciones de su organizacion que antes mantenian gracias a ser ellos los custodios de la infraestructura fisica (servidores, switches, data centers, etc.). Cuando la infraestructura fisica desaparece con el cloud computing, tambien se evapora el candado que tenian los CIOs sobre los usuarios. Cada vez son mas frecuentes los casos de areas operativas (Mercadotencia, Finanzas, Servicio a Clientes) que evaluan y adquieren programas como servicio sobre demanda con una minima intervencion de las areas de TI. De hecho en muchos casos los argumentos de los CIOs para construir nubes privadas, no son mas que razonamientos tecnicos infundados (pero muy bien presentados para sembrar miedo e incertidumbre) para seguir controlando el uso de las TIs y “abrazando sus fierros”.
- El “consumerismo” en sus usuarios es otra fuerza que les arrebata a las areas de informatica de una organizacion su control sobre los dispositivos y aplicaciones usadas en el ambiente corporativo. Todo empezo con los smartphones como el iPhone (y no precisamente los Blackberrys que eran los favoritos de los CIOs por el control de los usuarios que lograban a traves de ellos) donde se podia recibir el correo de la empresa o consultar la base de datos de clientes a traves de Salesforce.com. Ahora los usuarios llevan al trabajo tambien sus iPads y Tablets (empezando muchas veces por los mismos directores que rompen las reglas corporativas de seguridad) y contratan con su tarjeta de credito aplicaciones donde almacenan datos de la empresa o colaboran en grupo (todo eso sin que a veces las areas de TI se enteren).
2) Las fuerzas anteriores han cambiado completamente las reglas del juego del mercado de TI en el mercado Enterprise. Las organizaciones estan abandonando los modelos de evaluacion, compra y uso de las tecnologias de informacion y comunicaciones que han prevalecido los ultimos 25 años. Los grandes proveedores incumbentes que gozaban de un control ferreo del presupuesto de las empresas a traves de los CIOs como sus mejores aliados internos, estan siendo amenzados como nunca antes y como dice el articulo, las oportunidades abundan en ese mercado.
No es frecuentes que mercados de ese tamaño y complejidad cambien de manera tan radical en tan pocos años. Ahi se pueden encontrar oportunidades de disrupcion e inversion realmente signficativas y de escala mundial, gracias tambien al cloud computing como vehiculo global de distribucion.
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