7 Laws for the New Software Landscape
Vendors must rethink their products and marketing to succeed in the next era of software business.
By Ray Lane, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers
Apr. 06, 2006
CA used to run a great advertisement. It showed a businessman sitting behind a desk with a cardboard model of a software salesman standing on the other side, "How much software do you want to buy today?" "Great!" came the answer before the businessman could respond.
That's the way it used to be - but those days are long gone, never to return. Today's software makers face a changing landscape of customer priorities, business models and revolutionary technologies. Vendors that don't innovate and adapt will disappear (see my SandHill.com oped from January, The Innovate/Dominate Imperative.)
The next-generation of software will power the "Inter" Personal EnterpriseSM. It is a tremendous opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem - from startups to megavendors to service providers to investors. But all players must recognize that there is a new set of laws which will determine the products and marketing methods which will succeed in the next era.
The "Inter" Personal EnterpriseSM
Lots of people are talking about Web 2.0. The next-generation of Web-driven capabilities - modality, relationships, location, virtualization, user-generated content, personal activity recording - will also drive enterprise adoption and success.
The challenge for enterprise software makers is to harness the power of information that exists outside a computer screen. The key is to capturing the interaction between people collaborating and providing relevant contextual information. This improves the users' personal experience and spurs adoption of the application to the point that it becomes a Web-based tool for the enterprise.
Consumer-facing Web applications will be the inspiration for new enterprise apps. Individuals will have improved access to personalized information. Interactions will be more organic, fluid and modular. Individual adoption will drive enterprise usage - not vice versa. Yet the quality and relevancy of the information will increase as it is contributed back to the business.
Take Wikis. Usage of these collaborative publishing tools has exploded within enterprises around the world. When I think of the value and accuracy of the information that is generated by these tools, I often think back to when I would create the quarterly forecast at Oracle. I envision a salesman in Germany delivering his estimates to his boss who sends them through five or six layers of management before I see the totals. How many times was that original estimate massaged along the way?
If we could have had access to a wiki, I could have looked at the original estimate myself. Or better yet, I could have had a finance expert review the figures who knows the optimists and pessimists. I could have created my forecast and submitted it back online for review by fifty people look and receive further critique. A wiki would have improved the quality of the information and the process tremendously.
That's the way it used to be - but those days are long gone, never to return. Today's software makers face a changing landscape of customer priorities, business models and revolutionary technologies. Vendors that don't innovate and adapt will disappear (see my SandHill.com oped from January, The Innovate/Dominate Imperative.)
The next-generation of software will power the "Inter" Personal EnterpriseSM. It is a tremendous opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem - from startups to megavendors to service providers to investors. But all players must recognize that there is a new set of laws which will determine the products and marketing methods which will succeed in the next era.
The "Inter" Personal EnterpriseSM
Lots of people are talking about Web 2.0. The next-generation of Web-driven capabilities - modality, relationships, location, virtualization, user-generated content, personal activity recording - will also drive enterprise adoption and success.
The challenge for enterprise software makers is to harness the power of information that exists outside a computer screen. The key is to capturing the interaction between people collaborating and providing relevant contextual information. This improves the users' personal experience and spurs adoption of the application to the point that it becomes a Web-based tool for the enterprise.
Consumer-facing Web applications will be the inspiration for new enterprise apps. Individuals will have improved access to personalized information. Interactions will be more organic, fluid and modular. Individual adoption will drive enterprise usage - not vice versa. Yet the quality and relevancy of the information will increase as it is contributed back to the business.
Take Wikis. Usage of these collaborative publishing tools has exploded within enterprises around the world. When I think of the value and accuracy of the information that is generated by these tools, I often think back to when I would create the quarterly forecast at Oracle. I envision a salesman in Germany delivering his estimates to his boss who sends them through five or six layers of management before I see the totals. How many times was that original estimate massaged along the way?
If we could have had access to a wiki, I could have looked at the original estimate myself. Or better yet, I could have had a finance expert review the figures who knows the optimists and pessimists. I could have created my forecast and submitted it back online for review by fifty people look and receive further critique. A wiki would have improved the quality of the information and the process tremendously.
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