Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex Systems (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You seem to be hinting that the SAPs and Oracles are not as much on the cloud. The first statement you made is that they are on-premise solutions. The second thing you said is that they are coming at it from the financial point of view, whereas your software comes at it from the manufacturing execution system point of view. Did I get that correct?

Jason Blessing: Yes. Let me provide a bit more color on those two points, because they are very important ones. Plex was initially architected for the cloud. There are a lot of companies in the space right now that are saying they are in the cloud, but ultimately what most of these companies are doing is running hosted software across a variety of products they had acquired – people are on different releases. That eventually is going to crumble under its own weight. In our case, is it pure cloud and everybody is on the same release. >>>

Adobe’s Subscription Move

According to Gartner’s Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q12 Update worldwide spending on public cloud services is estimated to have grown 19% last year to $110.3 billion. The market is projected to grow 18% annually over the period 2011 through 2016 to be worth $76.9 billion by the year 2016. Within the market, SaaS segment is expected to grow 20% annually from $13.5 billion in 2011 to $32.8 billion in 2016.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex Systems (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I have heard of them.

Jason Blessing: Francisco Partners is slightly different in terms of private equity firms. They have classic leverage buyouts in their investment portfolio, but they also like to selectively look for growth equity opportunities – companies like Plex that look a bit more like a late-stage venture company and just need additional funding, boost, and leadership to go to the next level. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Interview with Jason Blessing, CEO of Plex Systems (Part 1)

Jason Blessing is the chief executive officer of Plex Systems, a company offering America’s first and so far only ERP cloud service solution exclusively for manufacturers. Jason graduated from the University of Michigan and he has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry. In this interview he talks about the unique offering of Plex Systems, and for what purpose mostly small and medium sized companies use it. He also shares insights into the future of the sector and how big data plays a big role in the manufacturing process. >>>

Salesforce Looking to Bridge CRM and Ads

Gartner recently published their report on the CRM industry, Market Share Analysis: Customer Relationship Management Software, Worldwide, 2012. The report reveals that the worldwide CRM market grew 12.5% last year to $18 billion. The biggest consumers of CRM technology reside in North America and Western Europe which commanded nearly 80% of the global market. But, emerging markets are picking up. China and Latin American markets reported some of the highest growth in the sector with 26% and 24% respectively. According to the report, Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) was the leading CRM services provider globally with over 14% market share, accounting for over $2.5 billion in annual sales.

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Athenahealth’s Expanding Product Roadmap

According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR) industry in the U.S. is estimated to be worth $6 billion by 2015. The report projects an annual growth rate of 18% over the five-year period 2010 through 2015.

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Amazon’s Growing Digital Empire

According to a Forrester report, e-commerce sales in the U.S. are projected to grow 13% this year to $262 billion. e-commerce sales are estimated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 9% over the period 2012 through 2017 to be worth $370 billion by 2017. E-commerce may be growing, but Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is counting on other avenues to help continue their own growth story.

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Google’s Mobile Strategy

According to a Gartner report released earlier this year, the worldwide mobile advertising market is projected to be worth $11.4 billion during the current year, compared with $9.6 billion estimated for the previous year. Gartner estimates the market to be worth $24.5 billion in 2016. The market is seeing strong growth driven by the increased adoption of mobile devices in emerging markets. The North American market is projected to grow from $3.18 billion last year to $3.83 billion during the current year and to $8.87 billion by 2016. But Asia remains the largest market with an estimated $4.33 billion last year projected to grow to $9.48 billion by 2016.
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