Johannesburg, 24 Nov 2016
Whether you are a Fortune 500 ecommerce company or a mid-sized organisation delivering B2B services in a software-as-a-service model, one fact is undeniable: you rely on the Internet and many network-based services to operate.
You are an online business.
The notion of the 'online business' was born in the mid-to-late 1990s largely as brick-and-mortar stores took to the new platform of the World Wide Web. In 1999, the online sales of products sold through physical stores totalled approximately $20 billion, or nearly two thirds of all sales on the Web. Yet, a year prior, eBay became an early darling of the financial world when its stock climbed 163% in its first day of trading, largely paving the way for a new wave of e-commerce companies. Today, e-commerce sales in the US alone are over $335 billion, and are projected to increase to $523 billion by 2021.
Soon, the notion of the online business would expand to those leveraging the Internet as not just an order taking system, but an actual delivery platform. Application Service Providers (ASP) would emerge and largely evolve into today's software-as-a-service. IDC estimates that by 2018, 27.8% of the worldwide enterprise applications market will be SAAS-based, generating $50.8B in revenue.
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