I just stumbled upon article on VentureBlog.com by David and I have to agree to the things he points out. In essence:
„Enterprise Software is Not Dead Yet“
But it has to transform. We at motionet delivered our enterprise community framework „YUMA“ from the beginning on with very sophisticated business models. Because with our whitelabel, module based community, we are able to deliver web 2.0 functionalities fast (low time to market) reliable and safe (robust and tested many times in live setups), we offer our customers performance based fees.
Take a typical video streaming module from YUMA as a hosted solution and integrated into a customers‘ existing infrastructure (e.g. Coremedia CMS). Typically there’s a small setup and customizing fee, but running costs depend on traffic. In these traffic fees all monitoring and service fees (updates etc.) are included. So the customer is able to try web 2.0 functions on their site for a small amount of money – if their users like it, traffic grows, and our customer, as well as us, participate with growing traffic – with integrated adserver-functions, this can be refinanced. And this is exactly a good selling argument for our software:
„If you can credibly argue that a customer’s increased profits will exceed the price it will pay for the software, purchasing the software should be a no brainer.“
And by offering hosted solutions (Software as a Service), always based on the same software core, ROI rises for our customers by dividing update and development costs through many.
May I ask: Is web 2.0 software dead yet? No it isn’t. But:
There’s no need for any more facebook out there. But companies, which understand web 2.0 as the participating web, or communication web, can profit by reducing e.g. service or callcenter costs for their products, by letting their customers talk and help each other: users helping users is a key feature with a huge potential out there in the web 2.0 market. As David says:
„Companies will pay to save money. Even in a recession, those enterprise solutions that can credibly argue that they will save you more than they cost will continue to grow.“
But not only for public websites, but for Intranets web 2.0 software is a key to reduce costs: take a worldwide operating marketing department which can share their knowledeg about campaigns, can discuss new advertisements, buy display ads together and so gain scale effects. By exchaning all their knowledge, why develop the same advertisements for similar target groups in every single country? If the german marketing departement just knew, that their collegues from Austria just launched a succesful campaign, they could use it for their own as well – and dramatically reduce agency costs.
