Building A Software Company From Toulouse, France: Jacques Soumeillan, CEO Of Cameleon Software (Part 7)

Sramana: Of all the competitors you started out against, it looks as though Selectica is the only one still around. Do you run into them in the marketplace often?

Jacques Soumeillan: They don’t have very many customers now. We are looking for some business that they had prior, but we have new competitors now such as BigMachines. IBM bought Sterling, so we now have IBM as a competitor as well. Competition is good, and we think the market we have in front of us is big enough for several companies.

Most of the time our competitor is the custom software developments that have been done by the companies themselves, such as some Java solution they developed. We see changes because of software as a service. We are strong advocates fo the SaaS model and we think we can develop that model more. We also are looking at mobility and have ported Cameleon onto the iPhone.

We have interesting deals in our pipeline with that technology because user experience is so important in that market. We are very proud of that development and are working hard to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.

Sramana: I have been following this space for 12 years, and I have never seen a large company built on this premise. I am interested in following your company to see how big it can be. I think you have innovated well on a niche, and I think 20% growth is a good assumption. I think the configuration value proposition is a difficult one to build a large company on.

Jacques Soumeillan: I do believe that some things are changing. The past three to four years have seen companies like ours and BigMachines post much better numbers. It is definitely a niche market.

Sramana: It is a niche market with decent growth year over year. You will see growth and be able to build a decent business. I don’t think it is a billion-dollar market.

Jacques Soumeillan: I am not certain about that. We did market analysis in 2006 and saw 95% of configurator companies were looking for business in manufacturing. They were only looking for manufacturers. The market we have in front of us is much more important that just manufacturing. When you see the type of deals we are able to make with telecom operators, you will see that we are not talking about 100,000 licenses or subscriptions; we are talking about millions of licenses. The game is starting to change. I agree that for the moment this change is not completely visible. I have been in this business for 20 years, and this is the most excited I have ever been. I think we are starting a new cycle.

Sramana: I think it is an interesting business and I wish you luck. I love the fact that you are from Toulouse, France. I am sure if you can become a big company it will be a great success story for Toulouse entrepreneurs.

Jacques Soumeillan: I hope so. That is what motivates me every morning.

Sramana: Great! Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Building A Software Company From Toulouse, France: Jacques Soumeillan, CEO Of Cameleon Software
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