Business 2010
I believe that we are about to see a major innovation occur in the software industry that will transform the nature of midsize businesses through a convergence of technology and business. This view has also been espoused by industry luminaries, discussing the future of technology innovation. A few weeks ago, Shai Agassi said to ZDNET’s Dan Farber that the implications of R3 were that you could globalize a company, and that the implications of SOA are that it gives you unprecedented business model flexibility. So, if a company sees a new opportunity, it can attack the opportunity as a business and have their IT systems reflect that new business – not in a matter of years, but in a matter of days, weeks, months instead. This technology advantage then translates into a strategic business advantage because it enables a company to respond to changing market dynamics more quickly and be first to market. In short, we will see a convergence of software & business that will level the playing field for mid-size businesses and allow these companies to be much more agile, and therefore more much competitive. (Read full article …)
Lyla,
How do you define Mid-Sized businesses? Can you provide some revenue / employee size guidance to help understand the segmentation better?
Sramana
Sramana, good question. Midsized businesses can roughly be categorized as companies with 100-2,500 employees, or less than $1bln in revenues. Obviously, this is a big range and covers the upper mid-market at the high end of this range.
So where do you see opportunities for entrepreneurs to focus on new business opportunities?
Also, there are some more granular segmentation here … the 100-500 employee segment varies quite a bit from the 500-2500 employee segment (which behaves a lot more like a regular Enterprise, at least from a channel point-of-view).
In your article, the point about “Collaboration needs across a Virtual Enterprise” is worth noting. All the tier-1, tier-2, may be even some tier-3 suppliers of certain large enterprises (like GM, Ford, Boeing) fall within your definition of Mid Market.
[…] Recently, I sensed that Foundation was flirting, like everyone else, with more consumer internet oriented viral businesses, rejecting their enterprise business expertise, but was pleasantly surprised to find out in this interview, that they’re still interested in enterprise / IT. IMO, they are one of the best equipped firms to tap into the mid-market IT opportunity that is opening up. […]
Lyla,
What percent of the overall business market do you estimate MM to represent?