> But its a beginning. Dropbox is raising a lot of money to go after some aspect of the enterprise market.
They really aren't. Revenues 2010 from various quickly Google'd sources and Wikipedia:
DropBox $100M
IBM $99.9B
Oracle $26.8B
SAP $17.9B
All of the big players there saw double-digit revenue growth relative to the previous year, too.
If you're about to reply with something about DropBox having a $5B valuation according to their next funding round, please consider that (a) AFAIK the round hasn't actually closed yet, and the markets have been pretty messed up recently so it's a lot less likely now than it might have been even a month ago, (b) GroupOn have been getting "valuations" well into 11 figures as well, which tells you how much this crazy maths is actually worth as a guide to future potential, and (c) DropBox are probably still small enough to be wiped out just by bad press and/or lawsuits over their reportedly dubious security and privacy policies, at least until any new round of funding goes through, and (d) in any case, a $5B valuation is a long, long way from having $5B in cash available to invest in attacking the enterprise market.
> From niches will come the important profitable software of the future.
I'm not sure what sort of niches you're imagining here. Pretty much every deployment of the heavyweight enterprise software is bespoke. That's why the developers tend to have teams dedicated to each major customer: they make a fortune on the consulting and customisation, on top of the cost of the software itself.
They really aren't. Revenues 2010 from various quickly Google'd sources and Wikipedia:
DropBox $100M
IBM $99.9B
Oracle $26.8B
SAP $17.9B
All of the big players there saw double-digit revenue growth relative to the previous year, too.
If you're about to reply with something about DropBox having a $5B valuation according to their next funding round, please consider that (a) AFAIK the round hasn't actually closed yet, and the markets have been pretty messed up recently so it's a lot less likely now than it might have been even a month ago, (b) GroupOn have been getting "valuations" well into 11 figures as well, which tells you how much this crazy maths is actually worth as a guide to future potential, and (c) DropBox are probably still small enough to be wiped out just by bad press and/or lawsuits over their reportedly dubious security and privacy policies, at least until any new round of funding goes through, and (d) in any case, a $5B valuation is a long, long way from having $5B in cash available to invest in attacking the enterprise market.
> From niches will come the important profitable software of the future.
I'm not sure what sort of niches you're imagining here. Pretty much every deployment of the heavyweight enterprise software is bespoke. That's why the developers tend to have teams dedicated to each major customer: they make a fortune on the consulting and customisation, on top of the cost of the software itself.