eBay、惠普等科技公司分拆，对云计算的未来有何预示？

    SAP并没有坐以待毙。为什么？因为在科技平台的转型中，“站错队”的经济后果可能极为严重。

    我们不妨看一下目前十家最大的企业科技巨头的市值（SAP也是其中之一）：它们的总市值超过1.3万亿美元。但如果再看看2012年到2014年的IPO数据，你就会发现，这些IPO只创造了600亿美元的市值（Workday一家公司就贡献了其中的25%）。如果把同一时期十巨头的并购行为也计算在内（在SAP以83亿美元收购Concur之前），我们发现收购总额只有300亿美元。其中大多数收购标的并不是真正意义上的云技术。

    所以说，尽管最近企业科技领域的一连串IPO让很多人兴奋不已，但现在还没有到云技术向传统平台发起“总攻”的时候，甚至差得还远。正如前文数字所说，传统技术占据的市值与最近的IPO和并购所创造的市值相比，相差何止十倍。

    这意味着，我们将会看到收购领域的“军备竞赛”持续升级，同时，加入IPO大军的企业科技公司也会越来越多。不仅传统科技公司会进行更多的收购行为，一些新兴科技巨头很可能也要大举收购，以保持竞争优势，比如Saleforce.com和Workday。

    不过，收购并不等于全部。更有意思的是前文提到的企业分拆与剥离。传统企业科技公司现在正想方设法地使自己变得更专注，更苗条，进而成为更灵活的竞争者，以便更好地在这个全新的世界中竞争致胜。（对新型科技公司进行定向收购，几乎肯定是这些传统科技公司在分拆后会采取的策略。）

    不管怎样，信号都是明显的：目前平台转型正在发生。这一次，传统科技公司恐怕难以依赖老旧的业务吃老本。上一批初创公司即将变成新的“传统”公司，同时一些“守成者”则试图瘦身成类似初创公司那样的企业。这又是另一种逆变。

    不管是收购还是分拆，似乎没有人愿意自发地从内部变革自己。人们大概忘了：Concur一开始也是一家传统软件公司，后来它做了个艰难的决定，付出了高昂的代价，才转型成一家软件即服务类公司。该公司CEO五年前曾表示：

    “我不相信大公司能实现这种转型。且不说什么‘基因密码’，有多少家公司愿意承受这种痛苦？企业都不想重塑自己……现金流会被摧毁，而且你需要裁员。转型的过程是非常艰难的，而且非常突然。如果你的市值是1亿美元以上，转型会非常艰难；如果超过10亿美元，那就是不可能的事情。”

    至少从这个角度来看，目前还没有多大改变。（财富中文网）

    本文作者Scott Kupor是安德里森•霍洛维茨基金的常务董事，全面负责该公司的运营。他此前曾任惠普公司全球客户支持与软件即服务副总裁兼总经理。安德里森•霍洛维茨基金的联合创始人马克•安德里森目前同时出任惠普和eBay的董事会成员。拉尔斯•达尔加德在加盟安德里森•霍洛维茨基金前，以合伙人身份创办了SuccessFactors公司，目前仍是该公司的顾问。安德里森•霍洛维茨基金也是Nicira公司的投资人。

    译者：朴成奎

    SAP is not standing idly by. Why? Because the financial consequences of being on the wrong side of technology platform shifts can be monumental.

    Take a look at the market cap of the 10 largest enterprise incumbents (of which SAP is a member): There’s more than $1.3 trillion of market cap in this group. But if you look at the 2012 to 2014 class of enterprise IPOs, we’ve created only about $60 billion in new market cap (and one company, Workday WDAY -1.08% , is around 25% of that amount). Add in enterprise M&A by the top incumbents in that same timeframe (before the $8.3 billion SAP-Concur acquisition) and we’ve seen only $30 billion in acquisitions. And most of those acquisitions were not really of modern cloud-based technologies. There’s much more to come.

    So despite all the excitement about the number of new enterprise technology IPOs of late, we haven’t seen the final salvo in the battle. Not even close. As the above numbers illustrated, there’s more than 10 times the amount of legacy market cap outstanding compared with the amount of new market cap created through IPOs or acquisitions to date.

    That means we’re going to see the acquisition ‘arms race’ escalate, and number of new enterprise IPOs continue to grow. And not only will we see the legacy players engage in more acquisitions, but we will likely see acquisitions from some of the larger new incumbents — like Saleforce.com and Workday — as they seek to stay ahead of the curve.

    Acquisitions alone don’t tell the entire story, though. Perhaps even more interesting is the corporate splits and spinoffs I mentioned earlier. The legacy enterprise players are now reconfiguring themselves into more focused, slimmer, and presumably more agile players so they can better compete in the brave new world. (To further complicate things, making targeted acquisitions of new technology companies will most certainly be part of the legacy players’ post-split strategy, too).

    Either way, the signal is clear: There’s a platform shift happening. This time, the legacy players won’t survive by relying on their old lines of businesses. And as previous startups are becoming the new legacy players, some of the older incumbents are trying to reconfigure themselves into startup-like businesses. Another inversion of sorts.

    Acquire or split. No one seems to be going at this organically, from within. Something that’s been forgotten is that Concur started out as a conventional on-premise software company before making the difficult and sometimes costly shift to being a SaaS company. As its CEO noted over five years ago:

    “I don’t believe large companies can make the conversion. Forget their genetic code. How many will take the pain? Companies won’t reinvent themselves… Cash flow will get crushed. You have to layoff. The transition is really hard and it’s very sudden. If you’re north of $100M it’s hard. Over $1B it’s impossible.”

    There, at least, not much has changed.

    Scott Kupor is the managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he is responsible for all aspects of running the firm. Previously, he was VP/GM of Global Customer Support & Software-as-a-Service at Hewlett-Packard. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, currently sits on the boards of HP and eBay. Lars Dalgaard founded SuccessFactors before joining Andreessen Horowitz as a General Partner, and remains a consultant there. Andreessen Horowitz was also an investor in Nicira. Follow Scott on Twitter, @skupor