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Welcome to the latest weekly roundup of SaaS news! We bring together the top SaaS industry stories that you need to hear about.
This week, we cover the cloud software boom in India, the new Salesforce Ventures fund, SaaS revenue predictions for 2019, and the Uber IPO.
2019 SaaS Revenue Prediction
Gartner, the market research and consultancy firm, is predicting that, in 2019, the market will grow 17.3 %. The fastest-growing segment, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), is forecasted to grow 27.6 percent in 2019.
Craig Roth, research VP at Gartner says, “The increasing adoption of SaaS applications and other cloud services impacts the management, dissemination and exploitation of enterprise content. Organizations are steadily but not exclusively shifting their content environments to SaaS.”
The Cloud Software Boom in India
Spend on managed services and cloud infrastructure services in India is set to increase by 7.38% in 2019. Larger companies like Oracle are at the forefront of this change (reporting 30% year-on-year growth). Companies like Taj Hotels, Hindalco, and Indian Oil are transforming their software infrastructure in the hope of reducing costs and improving functionality.
“India is on par with any country because the business challenges are the same and the accelerated pace of change is the same,” says Steve Cox, Group Vice President, Oracle ERP and EPM Product Marketing, Oracle.
Salesforce Ventures Fund Earmarks $125 Million For European Startups
SaaS businesses are set to benefit from a new Trailblazers fund launched by Salesforce Ventures. This corporate VC firm was the most active in Europe last year, and over 35% of their funding went to SaaS companies. “We see tremendous opportunity to invest in companies across Europe as this market continues to grow at scale,” said Miguel Milano, international president at Salesforce.
Europe is considered a leader in cloud technology by many, and Salesforce Ventures committed $100 M of investment in the region in 2015. Some key investments included: GoCardless, Privatar and Onfido in the UK; FinalCAD, Akeneo and Sigfox in France; and Bringg.
The Uber IPO Draws Accusations of a Shaky Business Model
Problems regarding Uber’s “contractor” model are not going away. While no one directly relates this business model to the slump in Uber’s stock price since they IPOed, questions are still being asked. Possible solutions that may make this business model sustainable, both for firms and employees, include the possibility of capping the number of employees so that wages can be maintained.
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