????2013年對企業軟件公司而言將是最具意義的一年。準備迎接它的到來吧。鑒于聲勢浩大的消費者導向型科技企業上市之后的表現乏善可陳，投資者們正在失去信心。如今，事實已經一清二楚：團購網站Groupon股票已經跌至歷史最低，移動游戲公司Zynga的股票甚至跌至資產價值以下，而Facebook的股票價值也一直在圍繞當初IPO時的初始價格，以50%的幅度上下波動。與此同時，客戶關系管理軟件服務供應商Salesforce的市值卻達到了200億美元，而且十年內一直在持續上升，不得不令人感到驚奇。而獨立軟件公司Workday的市值能暴漲至70至80億美元，恐怕連創始人自己都感到吃驚。接下來，云存儲公司Box即將進行首次公開募股，所以系好您的安全帶吧，因為艾倫?列維來勢洶洶。

????現在，那些缺少創新的“化石級”公司是時候瓦解了。Salesforce淘汰了強制安裝的希柏（Siebel）軟件，率先吹響了對企業界舊勢力的進攻號角。Box的產品用起來就跟用戶注冊Facebook一樣簡單，對微軟（Microsoft）的企業界協作應用平臺Sharepoint展開了攻勢。與此同時，面向企業的公司銷售模式也發生了顯著的變化。他們不再像其他公司一樣，每次銷售都需要經歷冗長而費力的提案請求過程，去努力說服一家大型公司多個級別的負責人。在經營場所安裝的軟件價格昂貴，難以整合，會造成不必要的摩擦。而“云端”服務則可以立刻執行，投入使用，同時尤其有助于保持成本彈性。將寶貴數據保存在其他地方，許多公司都會擔心這樣做帶來的安全問題，而Salesforce則為減少這種擔憂掃清了障礙。現在，面向企業客戶的公司需要做的，只是說服客戶公司里的人花錢購買能夠提高生產效率、推動業務增長的產品，前提是把成本控制在一定范圍之內，不會引起法務部門或IT部門的注意即可。從小處著手，然后逐漸證明自身的價值，未來與整個客戶公司打交道就會簡單得多。

????隨著銷售模式的改變，用戶與產品互動的方式也在發生變化。“雄心勃勃”的新生代企業導向公司必將超越市場上領先的競爭對手。第一種轉變是將安裝軟件轉移到“云端”。第二種轉變是將產品向所有人開放，減少了銷售游說的必要。谷歌（Google）也早已推出針對廉價商用硬件的云服務，數年之前便已將軟件放在云中運行。接下來向手機的轉變已經開始，“雄心勃勃”的公司不會作壁上觀，眼睜睜看著消費類產品攻城略地。實際上，他們已經開始進入市場，同時抓住機會，對尚未考慮移動平臺的競爭對手發起攻擊。

????消費者向手機平臺轉移帶來了新的挑戰：設計。每一家公司、企業或其他類型的機構，都要考慮如何針對手機最有效地設計產品。對于大多數“化石級”公司而言，設計從來都不是他們的核心價值。用戶體驗在這些企業同樣不受關注，因為只要與一家公司的IT部門完成交易之后，關于如何學會使用產品，就得靠實際用戶自己去摸索解決了。關于使用何種手機的體驗，這些終端用戶能夠容忍嗎？不會，因為他們是決策者。Asana、Stripe和Box等公司的產品都經過精心設計，而且他們清楚，產品使用者變成了真正的決策者。他們深知，鑒于這樣的事實，競爭對手們要想培養注重設計的文化，并非易事。此外，對于每年可以帶來數億甚至數十億收入的整個客戶群，恐怕誰也不想惹惱他們，讓自己受到指責吧！這樣的成就可謂“唾手可得”，而且富有競爭力。

????企業級市場的機會千變萬化，不斷涌現出更高效的銷售模式、新的平臺，并強調針對實際用戶設計產品。此外，可預見的收入、龐大的市值，還有新的競爭，經過發酵最終必將爆發一場完美風暴。列維說得對：“企業軟件公司正在變得越來越火熱”，2013年將屬于企業軟件公司。

????本位作者蘇海勒?多西是一位企業家，致力于公司對于數據驅動的需求。在Slide公司擔任開發工作期間，他發現了良機，能夠幫助公司利用其數據獲得更強有力的見解，進而幫助其發展業務。他與蒂姆?特里福倫聯合成立了Mixpanel，旨在幫助客戶公司分析對他們的業務最重要的數據，并根據數據采取行動。Mixpanel是著名的Y Combinator初創企業孵化器的產物。蘇海勒曾在亞利桑那州立大學學習計算機系統工程，目前居住在加州舊金山。

????譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

????2013 is going to be the most significant year yet for enterprise companies. Get ready for it. With lackluster public offerings from just about every hyped up consumer oriented tech company, investors are losing faith. It's all out in the open now: Groupon hit its all-time low, Zynga's stock plummeted below the value of its assets, andFacebook is oscillating above and below 50% of its initial IPO price. Meanwhile, Salesforces' $20B market cap has been climbing for nearly a decade–amazing. Workday's sustained pop to $7-8B is probably surprising to the founders themselves. And, put your seat belts on for the impending Box IPO–Aaron Levie is fierce.

????The time is ripe for the uninnovative "dinosaurs" of enterprise to be disrupted. Salesforce started it by displacing Siebel's software that had to be installed. Box is doing it to Microsoft's Sharepoint by making it as easy to use their products as it is to sign up for Facebook. At the same time, the sales model for enterprise companies has shifted considerably. Not every sale requires a long, arduous RFP process where you must convince multiple layers of a large corporation. Software installed on premises is expensive and hard to integrate–creating unnecessary friction. However, the services on the "cloud" can instantly be implemented and utilized while remaining elastic especially in cost. Salesforce helped pave the way for relaxing the security concerns many companies had with their valuable data being somewhere else. Now enterprise companies simply have to convince any person in the company to expense products that will enhance their productivity or help the business grow–just as long as the cost is small enough that no one in legal or IT notices. Starting small, then proving your value over time has made it easier to get in with the entire company later on.

????Just as the sales model has changed, so have the ways customers interact with products. The new and "hungry" enterprise companies are built to outpace their market leading competitors. The first shift was moving installed software to the "cloud." The second shift has been making products accessible to anyone, removing the need to talk to sales. Google has had its own cloud of cheap commodity hardware it runs its software on for years now. The next shift into mobile has begun and the "hungry" companies aren't standing back watching consumer products pioneer the way. In fact, they're doing it themselves by getting into the market and taking the opportunity to out position their rivals who haven't even considered the platform yet.

????The displacement of consumers to mobile has created a new challenge: design. Every company, enterprise or otherwise, is dealing with thinking through how to best design their products for mobile. For most of the "dinosaurs" in enterprise, design has never been a part of their DNA. Customer experience isn't either because once the deal is signed by IT, then it's up to the actual people who will use the product to deal with learning how it works. Would those same end customers put up with that experience with respect to which mobile phone they will use? No, because they are making the decision. Companies like Asana, Stripe, and Box are beautifully designed products that understand the decision makers are steadily becoming the people who use the products. And, they understand it's difficult for their competitive counter-parts to build in design DNA after the fact. Besides, who wants to be blamed for upsetting an entire customer base that is generating hundreds of millions if not billions in revenue a year. It's competitive low-hanging fruit.

????The enterprise opportunity is rapidly changing with a more efficient sales model, new platforms, and an emphasis for designing products for the people that use them. Additionally, predictable revenue, huge market caps, and new competition culminate into a perfect storm. Levie is right, "enterprise is getting sexy" and 2013 will be the year of enterprise.

????Suhail Doshi is an entrepreneur focused on the need for companies to be data driven. While working as a developer at Slide, he saw the opportunity to help companies to use their data to gain powerful insights that help them grow their business. He and Tim Trefren co-foundedMixpanel, which became a product of the famed Y Combinator start-up incubator, to help companies analyze, learn from and act on the data that matters most to their businesses. Suhail studied Computer Systems Engineering at ASU and lives in San Francisco, CA.