Struggle for HP Continues Post-Split

This was the first quarter that HP reported its financials as two separate entities – Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (NYSE: HPE) and HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ). Despite the split and the company managing to surpass market expectations, HP doesn’t appear to be doing anything radical to beat the declining trends in the industry.

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CloudFlare Delays IPO Plans

According to Gartner, worldwide spending on information security in 2015 was expected to reach $75.4 billion, up 4.7% over 2014 driven by government programs, increased legislation and high-profile data breaches. A MarketsandMarkets report expects the global cyber security market to grow at a CAGR of 9.8% to reach $170.21 billion by 2020. CloudFlare, which entered the Billion Dollar Club in 2012, expected to go public in 2017. But with the current turmoil in the market, it has delayed its plans. >>>

2016 IPO Prospects: Apttus Bootstrapped First, Raised Money Later

The Quote-to-Cash industry appears to be a high interest industry right now. According to Gartner, the market opportunity is expected to grow to $41 billion in 2018 from $31 billion in 2015. In December last year, Salesforce spent $360 million on the acquisition of SteelBrick, a startup in this space. San Mateo-based Apttus is a much bigger player in the market and is preparing to go public now.

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Workday Eating into Oracle and SAP

Workday (NYSE: WDAY) continues to compete and beat Oracle and SAP at their own game. The company has shown how to uproot legacy vendors like Oracle and SAP by offering a cloud-based solution. In the last quarter, Workday replaced Oracle at Bank of America and signed 40 new customers within the cloud-based financial management space at the expense of Oracle and SAP. According to Workday, every large customer that it is winning is replacing either an Oracle or SAP implementation of legacy software and now, it is replacing them in the cloud-based application segment as well.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: OfferUp Still Needs to Figure out Revenue Model

I have always questioned sky-high valuations in the absence of a justifiable business model. One such company is local Peer-to-Peer commerce player OfferUp. Over the last five years, the company has achieved the Billion Dollar Unicorn status within the local P2P market, without even figuring out how to earn revenues. >>>

2016 IPO Prospects: MuleSoft is a Unicorn, but Detailed Financials Remain Unknown

According to a MarketsAndMarkets research report, the global enterprise application integration market is estimated to grow from $7.85 billion in 2014 to $13.35 billion in 2019. That translates to an annualized growth rate of 11% over the five year period. Last year, San Francisco-based MuleSoft was hoping to become a Billion Dollar Unicorn in the industry. And, it did.

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Salesforce Reinforces that the Cloud is Just Fine

According to a Bernstein Research report, only 8% of the $1.6 trillion global IT spend is spent on cloud computing technologies. But cloud is the fastest growing segment within IT. The researcher claims that in 2015, $128 billion or 60% of IT spending growth was spent on cloud technologies. By 2018, it predicts that all of IT spending growth dollars will be attributed to the cloud. Recent results by Amazon and Microsoft have shown the importance of cloud technologies. Last week, Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) reported its quarterly results and outlook that continued to prove the dominance of cloud-based offerings. During the quarter, the company signed two nine-figure deals and more than six hundred seven-figure deals across multiple industries – translating to over $1.81 billion in quarterly sales. Clearly, there is no stopping this force.

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2016 IPO Prospects: Warby Parker Should Look Before Leaping

Amazon has conquered the e-commerce space, leaving little scope for smaller players to grow. It has been observed that only niche e-commerce players have somewhat managed to survive its onslaught. Online eyewear retailer Warby Parker is one such player. In fact, its storefront strategy to build brand awareness seems to have inspired even Amazon. >>>

IBM Keeps Buying in a Bid to Turnaround

IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) top line continued to decline in the last quarter. This was the fifteenth consecutive quarter since revenues have fallen. In a bid to change this trend, Big Blue is investing heavily in acquisitions especially in the hot segment of cloud computing. But first the numbers.

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2016 IPO Prospects: Zscaler Sets IPO as a Long-Term Goal

A recent report published by MarketsandMarkets estimates the Security-as-a-Service Market to grow from $3.12 billion in 2015 to $8.52 billion by the year 2020 at 22.2% annuallly over the next five years. The research firm expects the healthcare vertical to command the highest share of the market. Growth in the industry will continue to be driven by the increasing adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) among organizations and the need for organizations to shift from traditional security to advanced security to protect the critical assets from potential threats. San Jose-based Zscaler is looking to make its mark in this high growth market.

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