
A Re-Birth for Enterprise Software? [video] - jasonlbaptiste
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/05/andreessen-enterprise-software/
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jasonlbaptiste
This is really encouraging. I caught this small bit when I was listening to
the interview on the treadmill this morning. I was actually going to email
Mike and ask if he could go into the topic more. I'm glad this post was
created. The explosion of SaaS apps is absolutely mind blowing. We're
cataloging 300+ apps already on Cloudomatic. Some things I've noticed, since
I've spent time looking at each app we list:

\- Most of these companies did not exist 18 months ago. The ones that did,
were definitely much smaller. This is mind blowing.

\- A LOT of the apps are of high quality. The design, value prop, pricing,
etc. seems spot on. I haven't tested them all, but from first glance, I'm
impressed by most apps.

\- I spend a lot of time in the SaaS sector specifically, and even more so in
the web app space as a whole. I've never heard of most of these apps, and it
stuns me how many are out there. We're just hitting the tip of the iceberg.
There are a ton of underserved niches waiting to take your credit cards.

\- I used to run a SaaS startup back in 2008. There were no recurring billing
solutions for small SaaS startups. Seriously, you had to build this shit
yourself. Now there are FOUR players.
<http://cloudomatic.com/?s=recurring+billing> . Something is clearly going on
here, if four companies have sprung up in under 18 months to meet this exact
need.

\- There are big market numbers being thrown around. I think they're
overestimating for the near term, but underestimating for the long term.
Google Apps is only doing 50 million this year, but that's irrelevant. The
fact that it's some number that's growing + goog apps is being used as a
bargaining chip by companies is what matters. Who knows if GOOG will win with
G Apps long term, but the SaaS market certainly is/will.

\- I can't comment on Enterprise adoption ie- very very large companies with
red tape laden IT departments. They will be the last to adopt and that's fine.
Small and medium sized businesses are adopting this stuff right now. The
Enterprise will follow down the road, probably with their own stipulations.

\- Build HTML 5 offline access into your SaaS app. SaaS right now does a poor
job of passing the "can I use it on a plane" test. This also helps the "what
if my net goes down?" problem.

\- The hardest part for SaaS startups is getting distribution and customer
acquisition. You don't get the viral mechanics of a consumer web app and you
don't get the distribution that packaged software got in the 80s+90s with
catalogs, resellers, retail stores,etc. We're hoping to solve the latter with
Cloudomatic.

(I just wrote these points off the cuff. I hope to gather some more concreate
and in-depth points over the next couple of weeks.)

~~~
dualogy
The last bullet point matters most to me and predictably many others. If you
figure it out in a big way, you'll have a winner on your hands.

