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Enterprise Software Sales Dried Up In September
CurtMonash writes "As I predicted a week ago, it looks as if the third quarter was ugly for software vendors, due to the economic crisis. SAP said 'The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter.' My old acquaintance John Treadway, who used to work in Sybase's financial services vertical unit, reports that things are even worse than that in the financial services industry, Wall Street and retail banks alike. So now what? Well, IT is a huge part of capital spending, and at enterprises that have to cut back capital spending, IT is going to get hurt. On the other hand, high-growth companies — Web businesses, analytic services providers, etc. — may try to power through the downturn. And the more directly an IT project affects near-term profits, the more likely it is to survive."
The LCARS operating system has been in decline for years now.
As I predicted a week ago, it looks as if the third quarter was ugly for software vendors, due to the economic crisis.
Truly you are a modern day Nostradamus.
I think people are putting off some investments while they wait to see when will the next Microsoft OS come out. People are afraid to replace something that's more or less working with something that has been so criticized as Vista.
The fundamentals of our economy are sound.
Literally - our economy is based completely on acoustical signals.
Well, at least they're not trying to blame piracy this time.
What?
That being the tail end of the Dotcom Bust shakeout. Here's a hint: you might want to go ahead and downsize your lifestyle so you can live on that again.
I sincerely doubt we're going to see 25% unemployment, Smoot-Hawley II, or a government takeover of the IT sector the way FDR tried to takeover industry. But it's quite easy to imagine Dow-Jones hitting the 7,300 level, and venture capital frozen until the credit markets thaw. You better be prepared to last it out.
You might want to:
The economy will come back, just like it did after the Dotcom Bust (assuming the $700 bailout isn't as destructive as the Japanese propping up zombie banks for a decade after their real estate bubble burst), but in the meantime it could be a long, cold winter...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
... an upswing in the use of in-house customized solutions based on FOSS for new ventures that want to cut costs ?
Don't worry, $10k will be worth $6,300 soon.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
From what I have personally experienced, and seen in the market in general it was not until mid 2003 that we saw a recovery from the dot com bust. It's only been five years, and to be honest wages have only recently gotten back in line.
How the heck am I supposed to get ahead when these downturns happen every 5 years or so? How does one build wealth, get married and raise a family? I mean I just got my 6 month emergency fund restocked, and now I might have to use it?
I've been in the business since 98. Are these 5 year cycles normal?
Right, if you are programmer and are willing to accept minimum wage, with no benefits.
Spoken like a kid who never had a job. Tell you what, we are a software company, and I can tell you that programmers cost a lot. Software development is darn expensive too. And you have to add up all the continual training cost for our staffs, not just the initial training to get them up to speed.
I hate to break that to you, not all softwares can sell millions of copies per year, certainly not enterprise softwares. You are not selling burgers here. A lot of companies would be really happy if they can sell 50 copies per year. Customizations, services, support, etc, all very expensive work.
Go to take a look at the "enterprise softwares" first, make sure you even know what all those terms mean (I'm not even talking about implementing them), and make sure you understand all the regulations/rules involved in the industry, yada yada yada... and then, we'll talk.
If you're paying a lot of money for software odds are you are being taken advantage of. No software should cost more than $10k Exception: scientific software (and I mean the really advanced stuff, simulations, etc), math analysis, etc, etc AND EVEN THEN
Well, as much fun as sweeping generalizations are...
There is some fantastic commercial, enterprise software out there, the likes of which FOSS cannot touch. I'm a DBA and love Postgres, and to a lesser extent MySQL, but neither has the breadth of features or capabilities that Oracle has. Postgres is a great product, but it's like Oracle 7...there's a big difference between it and Oracle 11g. And yeah, there are a lot of shops that don't need that difference, but there are a helluva lot of shops that do.
That's just to take databases. There's a wide variety of engineering software that I've supported over the years that is just not going to be touched by FOSS people any time soon and represents literally tens of thousands of man-hours of development time. My employer uses some really intricate software designed for our old-school industry that would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop in-house...and no FOSS group is going to say "hey, let's do that in our spare time for fun! And also make sure it works with everything else!"
I agree that big ERP packages are often big nightmares and yes, there's a lot of junk out there, but you can't just say "if you pay a lot for software, odds are you're being taken advantage of."
Advice: on VPS providers
This is a silly question. Windows of course has nothing to do with the problem. People are putting off software investments because they can't afford it. Credit has dried up and businesses can't get capital to spend on expansions. Smart businesses see software as an investment to grow, but if there's no business to grow into, or they can't get the money, then they don't invest and grow slowly, along with the rest of the economy. Now instead of floating loans they have to save money.
Automobile repair shops are doing very well, because more people are repairing cars rather than buying new ones. Same goes for software. Why buy new software and hardware when you can maintain the old.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Remember the dark days of the dot-com collapse? Microsoft's advertising slogan for Windows 2003 was "Do More With Less." It's ironic because their server software is one of the most expensive in the industry. The "Do More With Less" slogan is far more appropriate for open source software, which you can support in-house if you have the skill set on board.
And that is how it shall be if the economy takes another downturn. Open source software will thrive -- it's already bigger than it was in 2003 -- as more and more "enterprises" (gosh I hate that word) discover its incredible value prop.
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I know these people and I have always wondered how anyone so computer-illiterate could add any productivity to any business.
After plenty of observation the answer more often than not was: They don't.
Thus the solution to your concern is really simple: Fire the person who cannot work when "the blue e has moved" and fill the position with someone who can.
Training is a once off cost. License fee's come round every year. Free software tends to make up for itself after a few years, the only real impediment to moving is 1. US style CEO's dont think past the current quarter, 2. the current system is good enough (although MS is trying to change that with Vista)
If Mary is a CPA or has some accounting knowledge then she's smart enough to realise that if she doesn't learn she'll be looking for a new job. In "mary's" defence, most accountants I've worked with are more computer literate than many Developers I've worked with, some how coding and good computer use don't tend to go hand in hand.
Whenever a person is inducted into an organisation they will receive training anyway, even with the upgrade from 2000 to XP people needed to be trained and introducing people who cant think for themselves to Vista will have as much of a problem as if you moved them to Linux. People with half a brain (problem solving ability) are less of a problem and can figure out something like Ubuntu of Fedora Core in 1/2 and hour.
Incompetent people will not learn no matter how much training you put them through, all you can do is tell them where to click, you'll have to do it again after the next coffee break anyway no matter what operating system they are using so they may as well use the better OS.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
... Enterprise software just sucks?
There must be something wrong with your product if sales can just drop off so suddenly for no real reason. How can you blame this on an economic crisis? If people really need your software to do business, then they will buy it. Perhaps that software wasn't really necessary in the first place, if a small market downturn has such an extreme effect?
... and then they built the supercollider.