Is Jive Hoping for a Suitor?

IDC estimates the enterprise social platforms market will be worth $4.5 billion by the year 2016. That translates to an annualized growth rate of 43% over the next four years. The market is currently dominated by bigger players such as IBM, which commands more than 40% of the market share. Other big players trying to gain a stronger foothold in the market include Google and Microsoft. Google recently released its free collaborative tool, Google Drive. Microsoft spent $1.2 billion for the acquisition of enterprise social network Yammer. The growing might of these IT giants is hurting smaller players, which are finding it difficult to attract new customers.

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Concur Executing Steadily in Fast-Growing SaaS Market

Gartner estimates that the worldwide SaaS market was worth $12.3 billion last year and projects it will grow to $14.5 billion this year. Further, IDC estimates that worldwide SaaS market revenue will grow at an annual rate of 26% over the next few years to reach $53.6 billion by 2015. IDC also projects that by 2015, SaaS will account for 73% of public cloud services revenue. Existing SaaS vendors such as Concur are gearing up for this growth.

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Groupon on a Slippery Slope

Analysts believe that consumers are beginning to feel the effects daily deals fatigue in the email in-boxes after being barraged by discount deals offered by multiple vendors multiple times a day. Benchmark Capital analyst Clayton Moran believes that “the daily deal business has run into a wall.” According to Yipit, daily deals market revenues have fallen to $134 million in July in the top 30 North American markets, down from $144 million in June. This is obviously unwelcome news for the market leader, Groupon, (Nasdaq:GRPN) which has seen its market capitalization tumble since it listed in November 2011.

Groupon’s Financials
Groupon’s Q2 performance and outlook were a big disappointment to the market. Gross billings for the quarter fell from $1.35 billion a quarter ago to $1.29 billion. Net revenues rose 45% over the year to $568.3 million but fell short of the Street’s target of $575.3 million. International revenues grew 31% over the year but fell 4% sequentially to $308.2 million as the company was severely hurt by exchange rate conditions. Groupon’s international business now accounts for 54% of revenues. Net income of $0.04 cents a share, improved from a loss of $0.35 reported a year ago and managed to surpass market expectations of $0.03 a share.
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Asana Positioning Itself to Reach Ultimate Goal of $100 Billion in Revenue

A recent report by GIA projects the global cloud-based office productivity software market to be worth $16.56 billion by 2018. The researcher estimates that growth will be driven by increased adoption of these tools by small and medium businesses and Asia-Pacific markets. Menlo Park, California–based Asana was founded in 2008 by former Facebook employees Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz. The company is becoming a strong contender in the market segment.

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Box Eyes IPO At Unrealistic Valuation

Within the cloud computing segment, enterprise content management (ECM) is a fast-growth industry. Gartner projects that the ECM market will grow at a compounded rate of 10.1% annually to more than $5.7 billion by 2014.  Another report by researcher The Radicati Group projects that by 2016, the market will be worth $7.5 billion. Big names in the market include IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. But smaller players, such as California-based Box, are also making it big.

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More Fliers Not Translating to Higher Revenues for Online Travel Players

According to a report by the International Air Transport Association, global airline traffic grew 6.2% over the year in June 2012. But the agency expects traffic to slow in the coming quarters owing to the continuing European crisis. The depressed European market has hurt several online travel companies, which have lowered their outlooks for the current quarter.

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LivingSocial Experiments with Diverse Services and Business Models

Most of the recently listed Internet stocks have taken a beating. Daily deals site Groupon saw its stock fall more than 60% since its IPO in November 2011. The prevailing market conditions have forced Groupon’s competitor LivingSocial to revisit IPO plans. Analysts believe that the Internet deal market in the U.S. will grow to $4.17 billion in U.S., up from $1.97 billion recorded last year. Despite these rosy projections, LivingSocial is now not eying an IPO on the Nasdaq until next year.

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Yelp to Get Help From Siri

Analysts believe that local advertising markets in the U.S. were worth a total of $130 billion last year and project that number to grow to more than $150 billion by the year 2015. A BIA Kelsey report suggest that for several years, much of this market was not catered to by digital players. But that trend is changing, as is evident from this chart below, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

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ADP and Paychex Chug Along Amidst Uninspiring Jobs Numbers

According to market reports, U.S. companies added more jobs than expected in July. More than 163,000 jobs were added by U.S. companies, which was marginally less than the 172,000 jobs added in June of this year. A survey conducted by Bloomberg of 38 economists was projecting job growth of 75,000-180,000 during the month. Increased job opportunities were a positive sign for payroll processing firms, helping them to meet market expectations.

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ServiceNow’s Solid Start Will Faciliate Growth in the U.S. and Abroad

Like LinkedIn, recently listed IT service management (ITSM) provider, ServiceNow is a bright spot among publicly traded tech names. Here’s a quick update following our coverage earlier in the summer. The company recently announced quarterly results, and despite reporting a loss in the quarter, its stock seems to be doing well.

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