The New Building Blocks for Success

Finding profitability and longevity in today's software market environment will require focusing on a new set of principles.

By Ken Berryman, Principal, McKinsey and Company

In the software industry, we have long operated on a series of assumptions about our market: growth is inevitable; innovation leads to success; revenue drives valuation; horizontal solutions will provide the most compelling returns; and, old economy mindsets do not apply to software.

It's time to throw those assumptions out the window and move on.
Read more >>

Re-live the Best of Software 2005

Last week, 1,500 of the software industry's best and brightest gathered at the Santa Clara Convention Center for Software 2005. Now you can see the many highlights from the event at SandHill.com. Online this week: slides from popular presenters and the full conference report (in collaboration with McKinsey & Co.). Also see information on the hottest companies that presented at our Funding Forum and the news stories generated at the event. And check back each week for more new content from Software 2005.

Two Cents from Software 2005

Software 2005 represented a wide variety of perspectives on the critical issues facing the software industry today. Whether you missed the entire conference or didn't miss a session, read summaries of Software 2005 insight and implications in this week's SandHill.com blog. Email what you learned at the conference to editor@sandhill.com.

The Most Urgent "Building Block"?

As Ken Berryman outlines in today's oped, enterprise vendors must focus on a new set of building blocks for success to remain relevant in the next-generation software industry. Which of the five building blocks do you think is the most urgent? Take this week's Pulse Poll.

Last week, 41 percent of poll respondents said services-oriented architectures would be the technology that most impacted the software business in 2005. Open source placed second with 26 percent of respondents.

More at SandHill.com:

Read the enterprise software industry news of the week >>

Monitor the latest software venture capital deals >>

Scan the list of last week's software M&As >>

See who's made it to the top in our list of recent software executive appointments >>

Send us your feedback on this newsletter and the SandHill.com site... Email editor@sandhill.com

Parting Thought

"There is never enough time, unless you're serving it."
— Malcolm Forbes

Courtesy of Malcolm Kusher, The Kushner Group

THIS WEEK'S SPONSOR

Horn Group provides communications services to technology companies at every stage of growth.
www.horngroup.com

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SandHill.com is published by Sand Hill Group, which provides investment and management advice to emerging leaders in the $600 billion enterprise software, services and solutions market. Sand Hill Group produces the Software and the Enterprise series of conferences for industry executives, and authors research reports on cutting-edge technology topics. Click here to find out more.

Business Strategy for Software Executives

May 2, 2005