- Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting
- Enterprise Accounting Software
- Financial Management Solutions
- Small and Medium Sized Business Accounting Software
- Treasury, Cash and Risk Management
- Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
- Business Intelligence Software
- Business Process Management (BPM)
- Enterprise Performance Management
- Reporting and End-User Query Tools
- RFID-- Radio Frequency Identification
- Warehouse Management Software
- Customer Experience Management (CEM)
- Customer Information Management
- Sales and Marketing Software
- Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
- Facilities Management and Maintenance
- Electronic Medical Billing Systems
- Healthcare Inventory Management
- Employee Benefits Administration
- Employee Relationship Management (ERM)
- Human Resources and Payroll Software
- Learning Management Systems (LMS)
- Workforce Planning and Management
- Enterprise Content Management
- Information Lifecycle Management
- Advanced Planning and Scheduling
- Integrated Manufacturing Solutions
- Manufacturing Enterprise Resource Planning (MERP)
- Product Life Cycle Management (PLM)
- Project Management Solutions
- Resource Planning and Scheduling
- Web, Video and Audio Conferencing
- Data Center Power Management
- Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC)
- Cloud Computing Applications
- Database Planning and Implementation
- Enterprise Application Integration
- Enterprise Application Integration Middleware
- Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
- Business Service Management (BSM)
- Business Technology Optimization
- Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM)
- Enterprise Resource Management
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
- IT Service Management (ITSM)
- Project Portfolio Management (PPM)
- Technology Planning and Analysis
- BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
- Managed Service Provider (MSP)
- Network Configuration Management Software
- Fraud Detection & Prevention
- Intrusion Detection and Prevention
- IT Security Frameworks and Standards
- Threat and Vulnerability Management
- Virtual Private Network Security
- Data Center & Storage Solutions
- Network Attached Storage (NAS)
- Remote and Offsite Data Storage
- SAN Virtualization and Consolidation
- Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
- Application Performance Management (APM)
- Enterprise Systems Management
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Software Configuration Management (SCM)
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Electronic Catalog Management
- Electronic Commerce Interchange (EDI-XML)
Posted by Lindsay Clark
In 1999, the IT world focused on the millennium bug and the bulging dotcom bubble, but former Oracle executive Marc Benioff and his associates Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez had other plans. They saw the mass adoption of, and investment in, the internet and its surrounding technologies could transform the software industry itself. In a world where computing resources could be centralised and served up to users via the internet, asking customers to buy enterprise software in the form of a client access licence made no sense. Benioff and his early partners bet that users would be happy to avoid the upfront costs and capital investment associated with launching new business applications by subscribing to software as a service (SaaS).
The bet paid off. Salesforce.com, the company Benioff launched to specialise in enterprise CRM and sales software, saw revenue of $1 billion in 2009, 10 years after the company launched. Its revenue now stands at around $10 billion.
SaaS has been a success, at least for those who sell it, says Gartner research vice president Jay Heiser. "To a large extent, SaaS providers are the winners. The model favours those who get large, first. But there is a long tail of all providers. It is not all just the sharks eating minnows; there is quite a range of companies that are thriving."
But it was not its popularity among customers that drove the software industry to adopt a subscription model. Instead, vendors saw how it appealed to shareholders.
"I believe most commercial organisations would prefer annuity to having uncertain revenue that comes every few years [through upgrades and new software purchases]. Big chunks of software sales are not good for shareholders as they don't represent a reliable income. Shareholders want customers to be locked into a subscription model that provides a reliable and consistent cashflow," Heiser says.
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Lindsay Clark is a freelance journalist specialising in business IT, supply chain management, procurement and business transformation. He has worked as news editor at Computer Weekly and several other leading trade magazines. He has also written for The Guardian, The Financial Times and supplements to The Times.
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