> the future of business software is gradually being built by Salesforce, Google, Dropbox
What color is the sky on your planet?
Enterprise software -- the largest software market by a long-shot -- is not scared of ... Dropbox. That's like saying that cars will be wiped out by lawnmowers. The statement doesn't make any sense. Nor does using Facebook and MySpace as examples of enterprise infrastructures. They're medium sized companies with disproportionately large infrastructure needs. What happens at Facebook says virtually nothing about what happens at Mercedes. And nobody in the enterprise trusts Google since enterprise software is all about managing worst case scenarios, and Google's "here, talk to a robot" isn't even in the same galaxy as an acceptable partner program for the enterprise.
Salesforce is the only one of those companies that even should be mentioned in the same breath and they're mostly a pain in the ass for Oracle and SAP because they've been chipping away at the low end of the market (very successfully). It is plausible that they'll continue to push upward and conquer increasingly larger markets, but that's something that will take a decade or two to unfold.
I mostly agree, but Google Apps for Business is slowly chipping away at some of the market that 5 years ago might've bought an enterprise "email solution", especially at the lower end of the market, like universities, state governments, and medium-sized businesses. Less success among very large businesses, but a few have adopted it.
Chipping away from the bottom takes time. But it will happen. Do you see the big enterprise software companies doing serious innovation in their products? The stuff that they built was often fairly cutting edge when they built it, but that was years ago, and those companies are sales driven not innovation driven, like Oracle. Of course they buy in newer more innovative technology, but then try to merge it with the legacy.
What color is the sky on your planet?
Enterprise software -- the largest software market by a long-shot -- is not scared of ... Dropbox. That's like saying that cars will be wiped out by lawnmowers. The statement doesn't make any sense. Nor does using Facebook and MySpace as examples of enterprise infrastructures. They're medium sized companies with disproportionately large infrastructure needs. What happens at Facebook says virtually nothing about what happens at Mercedes. And nobody in the enterprise trusts Google since enterprise software is all about managing worst case scenarios, and Google's "here, talk to a robot" isn't even in the same galaxy as an acceptable partner program for the enterprise.
Salesforce is the only one of those companies that even should be mentioned in the same breath and they're mostly a pain in the ass for Oracle and SAP because they've been chipping away at the low end of the market (very successfully). It is plausible that they'll continue to push upward and conquer increasingly larger markets, but that's something that will take a decade or two to unfold.