Sramana Mitra: Even within the IT portion, it sounds like I’m hearing infrastructure as a service as the organizing principle.
Ken Stephens: Yes. It’s a staple. You have to do that, and we do that.
SM: What gaps do you see in the market right now? Read the full article »
SM: It sounds like Xerox is turning into an IT outsourcing company.
KS: We have about $2 billion in revenue today from IT outsourcing already. We’re a $22 billion company, and about $2 billion of it is IT outsourcing. Now, in the market that we’re pursuing, the services business, historically, ACS and Xerox have pursued Fortune 2000, generally speaking. In the cloud space, we’re pursuing the SMB market as well. So, we’re not only pursuing the top 2000 companies in the world. We’re also pursuing companies that have $10 million to $250 million a year in revenue. Those are much smaller companies, as you can imagine. The reality is smaller companies have just as much, if not more, to gain from cloud computing than their larger competitors. So, it’s a very attractive market and one that we’re excited about. Read the full article »
Xerox, originally known as the M.H. Kuhn Company and then the Haloid Company, has been around for more than 100 years. The first electrophotographic or xerographic copy was made in 1938 by inventor Chester Carlson, who patented the technology in 1942. In 1948, the name “Xerox” was trademarked. Since then, Xerox has permeated our culture to the point where some people, when they want to make a photocopy of something, will simply say, “Xerox it.” Xerox has changed a lot in 100 years, as my conversation with Ken Stephens will reveal. Read the full article »
SAP, one of the largest companies in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market, recently reported strong results – its eighth straight quarter of double-digit growth – while its rival Oracle recently reported disappointing results. In December SAP announced plans to acquire SaaS talent management vendor SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. After Oracle’s $1.5 billion acquisition of SaaS vendor RightNow, SAP seems to be getting serious about its cloud strategy. Let’s take a closer look.
According to a recent IDC report, Worldwide Enterprise Storage for Public and Private Cloud 2011-2015 Forecast: Enabling Public Cloud Service Providers and Private Clouds, cloud computing will drive IT spending over the next five years. Overall spending by public cloud service providers on storage hardware, software, and professional services is projected to grow annually at 23.6% from 2010-2015. During the same period, enterprise spending on storage for the private cloud is projected to grow at CAGR of 28.9%. Together, both the public and private cloud storage segments are expected to account for $22.6 billion in spending worldwide. But it is not only the enterprises that use cloud storage services. Many individuals and smaller groups are also reaping the benefits of being able to store data on the cloud.
Since making its initial public offering in February 2000, Savvis has experienced significant growth, not only organically but also through acquisition. When the company decided to expand its operations in 2005 from network services to global IT services, a name change went along with it, and Savvis Communications became Savvis, Inc. In 2007 and 2008, the company opened offices in Singapore and London, respectively. In 2011, Savvis, Inc. and CenturyLink merged to create one of the leading global managed hosting and colocation providers.
SramanaMitra: Hi, Steve. Let’s set a bit of context both about your personal background and about Savvis. Read the full article »
A SaaS roll-up has been triggered by Oracle’s recently acquisition of SaaS vendor RightNow for $1.5 billion. In 2009, Adobe acquired SaaS web analytics vendor Omniture for $1.8 billion and since then has been making small acquisitions to sharpen their focus on digital marketing. Adobe recently reported fourth-quarter results that beat estimates. The company also announced changes in their reporting structure to accommodate recent activity in digital marketing.
Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) in October announced its plans to acquire its first Software as a Service (SaaS) company, RightNow, for $1.5 billion. Oracle had for long shied away from making any acquisitions in the SaaS sector, but it can no longer ignore the SaaS market, which is projected by Gartner to reach $21.3 billion in 2015. RightNow was the first step for Oracle, and it is highly likely that many more SaaS acquisitions are to follow. Even its rival SAP has followed suit with the $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors, a SaaS talent management vendor. This year seems to be gearing up for a SaaS roll-up.
