The traditional big six enterprise vendors are looking over their shoulders as Apple and Google start to move into their space, directly or through the back door.
Speaking at the Gartner Symposium, in Cape Town, Jeffrey Mann, Gartner research VP for collaboration and social software, said the current top six strategic vendors - Cisco, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Oracle and SAP - have dominated the enterprise landscape. However, there are companies that are disrupting their positions, such as Facebook, Apple and Google.
All six vendors are looking over their shoulders as the disruptive companies are coming up behind them and competing in different ways, noted Mann. These usurpers have broad market appeal, and a new business and ecosystem model.
The disruptive forces are driving a lot of change and pushing choices to the end-users in a space in which IT managers may not even have control, added Mann. “In this particular era, resistance really is futile.”
Mann explained that Apple and Google have new ways of entering markets and driving value with “radically” different products that disrupt how the business gets done.
Shifting sands
The search giant, which Gartner estimates earns about 1% of its revenue from business applications, tries ideas out first to see how they work. For example, it canned its Wave concept, because the numbers did not give it the results it wanted, despite the fact that some businesses were launched on the back of the concept, he said.
Microsoft, however, is different as it is more traditional and takes the role of a “steward” in that it takes care of its clients and provides continuity, noted Mann. While Google does not have any firm plans and is trying to change things to be radically exciting, Microsoft has a roadmap.
Apple, the third company that formed part of Mann's presentation, “makes a fetish of secrecy” and has a more indirect approach. Apple is entering the enterprise space through the backdoor as users bring in their own devices in their backpacks, commented Mann.
Apple, which designs for consumers and lets consumerisation happen, values the end-user experience. Mann said this is a big advantage in the enterprise space as people take their own devices to work and demand access to the enterprise through them.
The biggest source of revenue for Microsoft is its business division, which includes software like the Office suite and Exchange. Google, however, earns about 90% of its income from advertising.
Microsoft is looking for growth, but is no longer a growth company, he noted. It has been driven to push cloud because of Google, which started out in the cloud.
* Nicola Mawson is hosted at the symposium courtesy of Gartner.
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