Recession Upside for Enterprise 2.0 Upstarts
At the Web 2.0 summit last week, the tightening economy left the future of Web 2.0 start-up companies uncertain, not only in the consumer space as ad dollars fluctuate, but in the enterprise too. Enterprise 2.0, the market of vendors that sell technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networking applications to companies, is likely to become more competitive as IT budgets get trimmed.
One Enterprise 2.0 vendor, Socialtext, emerged during the last recession. Along with his co-founders, Ross Mayfield, the company's president, realized that social technologies such as blogs and wikis, which were being used heavily by unemployed workers in Silicon Valley to communicate with one another, could be utilized within corporations for collaboration purposes.
In an interview with CIO during the final hours of the Web 2.0 Summit, Mayfield said that while times are tough, it could be an opportunity for Enterprise 2.0 vendors to seize market share from IBM (with its Lotus Connections software) and Microsoft with SharePoint, both of whom, he adds, will cost enterprises more money.
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In Total Agreement
Great insights! The massive costs of implementing Sharepoint and lotus are certainly a deterrent for any organization. One possible impact of recession could be companies outsourcing more to reduce costs, thereby increasing the need for collaboration software.Perhaps the reason for the biggies offering SAAS versions of their popular products is because this method is increasingly popular, and is less burdensome and more predictable. But these companies will take time to find feet in the SaaS domain which is not their traditional forte. This could be a great opening for smaller collaboration players like HyperOffice which have experience in the SaaS domain, have good solutions and are well entrenched in the market.