I've been studying Atlassian for some time and I really admire their approach to enterprise and this is why I think they have been successful so far:
The majority of their tools can be installed on site. SAAS for enterprise is a lot harder to sell.
Most of their tools are built with Java so things are self-contained which makes it easier to install. Also their installations will most likely not need root access. Anybody who knows enterprise knows root access is usually clamped down in enterprise.
Their pricing model encourages a bottom up sales approach. Traditional sales channel for enterprise is top down where you go after execs, senior management, etc. and work your way down. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. can afford the top down approach. For most startups, this would be impossible. By making it very affordable for disgruntled employees/departments to use their product, they are able to create internal advocates for their product if it does make their life easier.
tldr; Don't make SAAS. Try to make your tool installable with non-root/admin access. Make it very affordable for individuals and small teams because they will become internal advocates if your product is good.
While I do think being installable on site helps, I don't think that is the primary advantage Atlassian has over other software companies.
In my opinion it has everything to do with the market. They build products for a market which likes good tools, has no problem putting them into their workflow, and telling all their peers about how awesome their tools are.
Contrast that to Zendesk which is largely a customer service tool. In a large company, customer service is largely run business majors who are more concerned with risk of process changes, than they are with (potential) cost savings from better software.
Nahh, there are PLENTY of enterprise customers who will never move to the cloud with sensitive data. So software installation at the customers site is a must for many of them, especially the larger enterprises.
Sure, the small web startup of 10 people doesn't care where their employees data is, a 100k employee enterprise very well does.
I had to install JIRA trial on my Windows, and decided to give it a go on a debian-vm through virtualbox. It was smooth - downloaded ~200mb bin file, ran it (not root), and installed it. Then all other updates (as you've said) came as .jar packages and installed them while it was running.
As a C/C++ programmer I felt impressed :) Oh and there is lovely API to talk to the system (unlike say... other systems that I won't name here for which you have to spent 10K only for the API).
I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion from the download correlation. There are tons of companies that offer their products as downloads that don't have the success that Atlassian has.
Yeah but do these downloaded software meet the following criteria:
- Insanely cheap ($10) where an employee would be willing to pay for it out their own pocket.
- The software actually makes the employee/departments life easier.
- The downloaded version doesn't contain any crippled support.
Atlassian's whole approach to enterprise is to create internal advocates. They don't care about the revenue that is generated from a $10 sale. They just want to plant seeds in companies so that when they do end up purchasing more than 10 user licenses, they know they can charge a shit load more.
I'm not sure if Atlassian is the first to implement this pricing model, but I believe it is the future for most enterprise sales.
The majority of their tools can be installed on site. SAAS for enterprise is a lot harder to sell.
Most of their tools are built with Java so things are self-contained which makes it easier to install. Also their installations will most likely not need root access. Anybody who knows enterprise knows root access is usually clamped down in enterprise.
Their pricing model encourages a bottom up sales approach. Traditional sales channel for enterprise is top down where you go after execs, senior management, etc. and work your way down. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. can afford the top down approach. For most startups, this would be impossible. By making it very affordable for disgruntled employees/departments to use their product, they are able to create internal advocates for their product if it does make their life easier.
tldr; Don't make SAAS. Try to make your tool installable with non-root/admin access. Make it very affordable for individuals and small teams because they will become internal advocates if your product is good.