Jive-ing the Public Market

According to an IDC report released for the previous year, the worldwide enterprise social market segment was led by IBM with revenues of $105.4 million from IBM Connections. IBM accounted for 13.7% of the market’s share. Jive Software (Nasdaq:JIVE) followed IBM at a distant second position with $65.3 million in revenues and 8.5% market share. Microsoft’s Yammer was a distant eighth with $22.3 million in revenues for the year. In a more recent report, IDC estimates the market to have grown 25% over the year to $1 billion in 2012 with IBM Connections maintaining its market leadership position for four years in a row. IDC estimates the market to continue to grow to $4.5 billion by 2016.

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Tableau’s Strong IPO

Researcher Visiongain’s latest report, “World Big Data Market Opportunities 2013-2018: Converging Data Architectures,” estimates global big data market to be worth $12.4 billion this year. The researcher believes that deployment of big data technologies will continue to explode in the coming years as more and more enterprises of all sizes, small and big, begin to deal with it. Today nearly 80% of the enterprises in the developed world are investing some portion of their IT budgets in handling big data. Seattle-based Tableau Software is one player helping these organizations analyze their big data.

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Model N’s IPO

According to Gartner in 2011, life science and technology companies worldwide spent an estimated $17.3 billion on software, consulting services, and internal IT personnel dedicated to sales support, marketing, and finance. For these companies, revenue management solutions are becoming a big part of IT spending. In a report published in 2009, IDC estimated that the absence of revenue life cycle management solutions for these companies caused a loss of more than $11 billion in annual revenues.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex Systems (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The U.S. has lost millions of manufacturing jobs. How many of those do you think are coming back?

Jason Blessing: That is hard to say, since there is no great data on it. But what you can point to are some of the most well-known manufacturing companies in the world like General Electric or Apple. Their CEOs are out in the press talking about bringing major portions of their manufacturing back to America. The movement starts with some of the thought leaders in the industry. They are doing it for the reasons I just described. Between that and the support in Washington to set up manufacturing hubs across the country, I think we are going to bring more life back into the segment. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex Systems (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What about smaller companies interested in providing value-added solutions on top of your systems? Is that something you are doing?

Jason Blessing: It is. We have a concept called community-enabled development, which is a platform that allows partners as well as customers that are big enough to have IT shops to build extensions on top of our products using our own tool sets. >>>

SAP’s Cloud Expansion

A recently released Gartner report titled Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q12 Update pegs worldwide spending on public cloud services to increase 18% annually over 2011 through 2016 to $210 billion. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will drive growth in the market by recording 41% annualized growth through 2016. Global SaaS spending is projected to grow 20% annually to $32.8 billion by 2016. The growing importance of cloud-based offerings is ensuring that the major technology players concentrate their efforts on bagging a bigger share of this market.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex Systems (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: About 10 or 12 years ago I worked with a mechanical design company, and we sold to all your customer base – the machinery, the discrete manufacturing, etc. What is today’s state of the union in the interface between CAD and manufacturing execution? >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex Systems (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: That sounds a bit high. I think you need to differentiate among the very large manufacturers – like the auto or aerospace industry, where it is an SAP sweet spot. It would be very hard for you to move any of those off SAP. If I were you, I’d figure out what the mid-market TAM is, and which companies are interested in the cloud and a more affordable solution and perhaps more interested in coming at it from the shop floor point of view. I think that is a more accurate assessment of where your opportunity is. I don’t think you’d be able to move to the larger ones. The number you are quoting includes those larger players. >>>