2013：企业软件公司逆袭之年

    2013年对企业软件公司而言将是最具意义的一年。准备迎接它的到来吧。鉴于声势浩大的消费者导向型科技企业上市之后的表现乏善可陈，投资者们正在失去信心。如今，事实已经一清二楚：团购网站Groupon股票已经跌至历史最低，移动游戏公司Zynga的股票甚至跌至资产价值以下，而Facebook的股票价值也一直在围绕当初IPO时的初始价格，以50%的幅度上下波动。与此同时，客户关系管理软件服务供应商Salesforce的市值却达到了200亿美元，而且十年内一直在持续上升，不得不令人感到惊奇。而独立软件公司Workday的市值能暴涨至70至80亿美元，恐怕连创始人自己都感到吃惊。接下来，云存储公司Box即将进行首次公开募股，所以系好您的安全带吧，因为艾伦•列维来势汹汹。

    现在，那些缺少创新的“化石级”公司是时候瓦解了。Salesforce淘汰了强制安装的希柏（Siebel）软件，率先吹响了对企业界旧势力的进攻号角。Box的产品用起来就跟用户注册Facebook一样简单，对微软（Microsoft）的企业界协作应用平台Sharepoint展开了攻势。与此同时，面向企业的公司销售模式也发生了显著的变化。他们不再像其他公司一样，每次销售都需要经历冗长而费力的提案请求过程，去努力说服一家大型公司多个级别的负责人。在经营场所安装的软件价格昂贵，难以整合，会造成不必要的摩擦。而“云端”服务则可以立刻执行，投入使用，同时尤其有助于保持成本弹性。将宝贵数据保存在其他地方，许多公司都会担心这样做带来的安全问题，而Salesforce则为减少这种担忧扫清了障碍。现在，面向企业客户的公司需要做的，只是说服客户公司里的人花钱购买能够提高生产效率、推动业务增长的产品，前提是把成本控制在一定范围之内，不会引起法务部门或IT部门的注意即可。从小处着手，然后逐渐证明自身的价值，未来与整个客户公司打交道就会简单得多。

    随着销售模式的改变，用户与产品互动的方式也在发生变化。“雄心勃勃”的新生代企业导向公司必将超越市场上领先的竞争对手。第一种转变是将安装软件转移到“云端”。第二种转变是将产品向所有人开放，减少了销售游说的必要。谷歌（Google）也早已推出针对廉价商用硬件的云服务，数年之前便已将软件放在云中运行。接下来向手机的转变已经开始，“雄心勃勃”的公司不会作壁上观，眼睁睁看着消费类产品攻城略地。实际上，他们已经开始进入市场，同时抓住机会，对尚未考虑移动平台的竞争对手发起攻击。

    消费者向手机平台转移带来了新的挑战：设计。每一家公司、企业或其他类型的机构，都要考虑如何针对手机最有效地设计产品。对于大多数“化石级”公司而言，设计从来都不是他们的核心价值。用户体验在这些企业同样不受关注，因为只要与一家公司的IT部门完成交易之后，关于如何学会使用产品，就得靠实际用户自己去摸索解决了。关于使用何种手机的体验，这些终端用户能够容忍吗？不会，因为他们是决策者。Asana、Stripe和Box等公司的产品都经过精心设计，而且他们清楚，产品使用者变成了真正的决策者。他们深知，鉴于这样的事实，竞争对手们要想培养注重设计的文化，并非易事。此外，对于每年可以带来数亿甚至数十亿收入的整个客户群，恐怕谁也不想惹恼他们，让自己受到指责吧！这样的成就可谓“唾手可得”，而且富有竞争力。

    企业级市场的机会千变万化，不断涌现出更高效的销售模式、新的平台，并强调针对实际用户设计产品。此外，可预见的收入、庞大的市值，还有新的竞争，经过发酵最终必将爆发一场完美风暴。列维说得对：“企业软件公司正在变得越来越火热”，2013年将属于企业软件公司。

    本位作者苏海勒•多西是一位企业家，致力于公司对于数据驱动的需求。在Slide公司担任开发工作期间，他发现了良机，能够帮助公司利用其数据获得更强有力的见解，进而帮助其发展业务。他与蒂姆•特里福伦联合成立了Mixpanel，旨在帮助客户公司分析对他们的业务最重要的数据，并根据数据采取行动。Mixpanel是著名的Y Combinator初创企业孵化器的产物。苏海勒曾在亚利桑那州立大学学习计算机系统工程，目前居住在加州旧金山。

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    2013 is going to be the most significant year yet for enterprise companies. Get ready for it. With lackluster public offerings from just about every hyped up consumer oriented tech company, investors are losing faith. It's all out in the open now: Groupon hit its all-time low, Zynga's stock plummeted below the value of its assets, andFacebook is oscillating above and below 50% of its initial IPO price. Meanwhile, Salesforces' $20B market cap has been climbing for nearly a decade–amazing. Workday's sustained pop to $7-8B is probably surprising to the founders themselves. And, put your seat belts on for the impending Box IPO–Aaron Levie is fierce.

    The time is ripe for the uninnovative "dinosaurs" of enterprise to be disrupted. Salesforce started it by displacing Siebel's software that had to be installed. Box is doing it to Microsoft's Sharepoint by making it as easy to use their products as it is to sign up for Facebook. At the same time, the sales model for enterprise companies has shifted considerably. Not every sale requires a long, arduous RFP process where you must convince multiple layers of a large corporation. Software installed on premises is expensive and hard to integrate–creating unnecessary friction. However, the services on the "cloud" can instantly be implemented and utilized while remaining elastic especially in cost. Salesforce helped pave the way for relaxing the security concerns many companies had with their valuable data being somewhere else. Now enterprise companies simply have to convince any person in the company to expense products that will enhance their productivity or help the business grow–just as long as the cost is small enough that no one in legal or IT notices. Starting small, then proving your value over time has made it easier to get in with the entire company later on.

    Just as the sales model has changed, so have the ways customers interact with products. The new and "hungry" enterprise companies are built to outpace their market leading competitors. The first shift was moving installed software to the "cloud." The second shift has been making products accessible to anyone, removing the need to talk to sales. Google has had its own cloud of cheap commodity hardware it runs its software on for years now. The next shift into mobile has begun and the "hungry" companies aren't standing back watching consumer products pioneer the way. In fact, they're doing it themselves by getting into the market and taking the opportunity to out position their rivals who haven't even considered the platform yet.

    The displacement of consumers to mobile has created a new challenge: design. Every company, enterprise or otherwise, is dealing with thinking through how to best design their products for mobile. For most of the "dinosaurs" in enterprise, design has never been a part of their DNA. Customer experience isn't either because once the deal is signed by IT, then it's up to the actual people who will use the product to deal with learning how it works. Would those same end customers put up with that experience with respect to which mobile phone they will use? No, because they are making the decision. Companies like Asana, Stripe, and Box are beautifully designed products that understand the decision makers are steadily becoming the people who use the products. And, they understand it's difficult for their competitive counter-parts to build in design DNA after the fact. Besides, who wants to be blamed for upsetting an entire customer base that is generating hundreds of millions if not billions in revenue a year. It's competitive low-hanging fruit.

    The enterprise opportunity is rapidly changing with a more efficient sales model, new platforms, and an emphasis for designing products for the people that use them. Additionally, predictable revenue, huge market caps, and new competition culminate into a perfect storm. Levie is right, "enterprise is getting sexy" and 2013 will be the year of enterprise.

    Suhail Doshi is an entrepreneur focused on the need for companies to be data driven. While working as a developer at Slide, he saw the opportunity to help companies to use their data to gain powerful insights that help them grow their business. He and Tim Trefren co-foundedMixpanel, which became a product of the famed Y Combinator start-up incubator, to help companies analyze, learn from and act on the data that matters most to their businesses. Suhail studied Computer Systems Engineering at ASU and lives in San Francisco, CA.