The enterprise software industry in 2007

Happy New Year to everyone!

I wanted to jump into 2008 predictions but only seems fair to review my track record from 2007. 2007 predictions included:

The last of the SOA middleware vendors get merged, acquired or shut down

I was almost completely wrong here. Savvion is still around as is Amberpoint and the rest of the gang. Above All Software seems to have shut down which was a real pity because Roger Sippl is something of a role model for me.

No open source companies will exit throughout 2007

I almost got this right but the acquisition of Xensource by Citrix killed this one. Much like Red Hat’s acquisition of Jboss, I can safely predict this deal will never turn accretive and will not transform the acquiring company’s prospects.

Oracle will acquire one or more sizeable application software companies within the first half of the year

OK, not such a hard prediction to make right? But keep in mind Oracle’s acquisition of Hyperion happened right at the end of the 1st half of 2008 and as predicted, just in time to keep analysts from determining if Oracle is achieving any real growth outside of the growth it acquires.

A significant handful of SaaS companies will make it through the IPO window

For sure this happened. Successfactors made it out as did Netsuite, Constant Contact and probably more I’m not tracking at the moment.

Tech boom enterprise applications startups come back to life

Big miss on this one as far as I can tell. The rich keep getting richer in enterprise applications as conservative customer buying patterns and a lack of innovation in the startup apps community prevents the new companies from taking off.

2007 will not go down as the year the Web 2.0 bubble burst.

True! Companies grew, ad revenues were up, bankruptcies were few. 2007 was another banner year for the web 2.0 trend.

In conclusion

So my batting average for 2007 was 3.5 / 6 or 58%. Does this mean I’m ready for analyst fame or infamy? Let’s see if I can get this up to 70% next year.