Building An Enterprise Software Company That Doesn’t Suck

An awesome breakdown of the new enterprise software companies being built now. I like to think ShopIgniter is one of these, as we not only follow some of these very articulate points but have proven them to work in the start-up atmosphere.

Editor’s note: Guest author Aaron Levie is the founder and CEO of Box.net

Thomas Wailgum, an editor at CIO.com, summed up the enterprise software industry best when he wrote, “It might appear that even tobacco companies enjoy a better level of overall ‘likeability’ than do enterprise software vendors.”

The way successful enterprise software companies have historically operated has been more or less uncontested: licensing costs increase at regular intervals, technology is difficult to integrate, and the user experience is often atrocious. Unlike most other open markets, which force out negative behaviors over time, many of the practices in place today serve the vendor and customer asymmetrically. Amazingly, more than 40% of IT projects still fail to deliver the expected business ROI, yet enterprise vendors come out winning regardless.

Read the rest of the article on TechCrunch: Building An Enterprise Software Company That Doesn’t Suck.