• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster

1

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch

2

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

3

Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster

2013: The year enterprise strikes back

By
Matt Vella
Matt Vella
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Matt Vella
Matt Vella
Down Arrow Button Icon
November 16, 2012, 12:15 PM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

By Suhail Doshi, contributor



FORTUNE — 2013 is going to be the most significant year yet for enterprise companies. Get ready for it. With lackluster public offerings from just about every hyped up consumer oriented tech company, investors are losing faith. It’s all out in the open now: Groupon hit its all-time low, Zynga’s stock plummeted below the value of its assets, and Facebook is oscillating above and below 50% of its initial IPO price. Meanwhile, Salesforces’ $20B market cap has been climbing for nearly a decade–amazing. Workday’s sustained pop to $7-8B is probably surprising to the founders themselves. And, put your seat belts on for the impending Box IPO–Aaron Levie is fierce.

The time is ripe for the uninnovative “dinosaurs” of enterprise to be disrupted. Salesforce started it by displacing Siebel’s software that had to be installed. Box is doing it to Microsoft’s Sharepoint by making it as easy to use their products as it is to sign up for Facebook. At the same time, the sales model for enterprise companies has shifted considerably. Not every sale requires a long, arduous RFP process where you must convince multiple layers of a large corporation. Software installed on premises is expensive and hard to integrate–creating unnecessary friction. However, the services on the “cloud” can instantly be implemented and utilized while remaining elastic especially in cost. Salesforce helped pave the way for relaxing the security concerns many companies had with their valuable data being somewhere else. Now enterprise companies simply have to convince any person in the company to expense products that will enhance their productivity or help the business grow–just as long as the cost is small enough that no one in legal or IT notices. Starting small, then proving your value over time has made it easier to get in with the entire company later on.

Just as the sales model has changed, so have the ways customers interact with products. The new and “hungry” enterprise companies are built to outpace their market leading competitors. The first shift was moving installed software to the “cloud.” The second shift has been making products accessible to anyone, removing the need to talk to sales. Google has had its own cloud of cheap commodity hardware it runs its software on for years now. The next shift into mobile has begun and the “hungry” companies aren’t standing back watching consumer products pioneer the way. In fact, they’re doing it themselves by getting into the market and taking the opportunity to out position their rivals who haven’t even considered the platform yet.

The displacement of consumers to mobile has created a new challenge: design. Every company, enterprise or otherwise, is dealing with thinking through how to best design their products for mobile. For most of the “dinosaurs” in enterprise, design has never been a part of their DNA. Customer experience isn’t either because once the deal is signed by IT, then it’s up to the actual people who will use the product to deal with learning how it works. Would those same end customers put up with that experience with respect to which mobile phone they will use? No, because they are making the decision. Companies like Asana, Stripe, and Box are beautifully designed products that understand the decision makers are steadily becoming the people who use the products. And, they understand it’s difficult for their competitive counter-parts to build in design DNA after the fact. Besides, who wants to be blamed for upsetting an entire customer base that is generating hundreds of millions if not billions in revenue a year. It’s competitive low-hanging fruit.

The enterprise opportunity is rapidly changing with a more efficient sales model, new platforms, and an emphasis for designing products for the people that use them. Additionally, predictable revenue, huge market caps, and new competition culminate into a perfect storm. Levie is right, “enterprise is getting sexy” and 2013 will be the year of enterprise.

Suhail Doshi is an entrepreneur focused on the need for companies to be data driven. While working as a developer at Slide, he saw the opportunity to help companies to use their data to gain powerful insights that help them grow their business. He and Tim Trefren co-founded Mixpanel, which became a product of the famed Y Combinator start-up incubator, to help companies analyze, learn from and act on the data that matters most to their businesses. Suhail studied Computer Systems Engineering at ASU and lives in San Francisco, CA.

About the Author
By Matt Vella
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in

Trump’s 927-page disclosure is just a normal Tuesday for direct indexing and crypto wealth managers
InvestingDonald Trump
Trump’s 927-page disclosure is just a normal Tuesday for direct indexing and crypto wealth managers
By Catherina GioinoJuly 1, 2026
1 hour ago
US President Donald Trump sits in silence with his hands folded on top of each other.
CryptoDonald Trump
Inside Trump’s $1.4 billion crypto empire: Altcoins, Bitcoin—and a stake in Michael Saylor’s Strategy
By Camila Grigera NaónJuly 1, 2026
2 hours ago
The 6 Best Exercise Bikes of 2026: Fitness Expert Reviewed
HealthDietary Supplements
The 6 Best Exercise Bikes of 2026: Fitness Expert Reviewed
By Christina SnyderJuly 1, 2026
3 hours ago
Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist.
EconomyU.S. economy
‘It’s fair to ask whether it was worth it’: The Iran war has cost Americans $1,000 per household—and that’s a conservative estimate, Mark Zandi says
By Tristan BoveJuly 1, 2026
5 hours ago
Melania Trump NFT earnings surge 28x in 2025 as first lady rakes in nearly $17 million in total earnings, filing shows
PoliticsDonald Trump
Melania Trump NFT earnings surge 28x in 2025 as first lady rakes in nearly $17 million in total earnings, filing shows
By Mia OsmonbekovJuly 1, 2026
6 hours ago
Donald Trump sits at his desk in the Oval Office, smiling and with his hands folded in front of him.
PoliticsDonald Trump
Trump got a $78K pension from the Screen Actors Guild in 2025 because he appeared in Home Alone 2 in 1992
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 1, 2026
7 hours ago

Most Popular

As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
Big Tech
As Big Tech showers employees with perks to win the talent war, Nvidia built a nearly $5 trillion company by making people pay for their own lunch
By Marco Quiroz-GutierrezJuly 1, 2026
17 hours ago
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
7 days ago
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
Success
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
By Preston ForeJune 27, 2026
5 days ago
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
Newsletters
The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling hands the U.S. economy a $7.7 trillion win
By Diane BradyJuly 1, 2026
15 hours ago
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
Success
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
By Sydney LakeJune 29, 2026
2 days ago
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 1, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 1, 2026
11 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.