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ServiceNow is a classic Enterprise software play that I like to call "old, but new". You take the same old software, with the same old processes, the same old
by gomox 5y ago
ServiceNow is a classic Enterprise software play that I like to call "old, but new".
You take the same old software, with the same old processes, the same old salespeople and sales approach, and you make a new one that is a little shinier and (crucially) freshly made. Because you used your same old connections and investors to fund the development, you have a much better product than whatever cruft HP Service Manager, CA Service Desk or BMC Remedy have been pushing, simply because you haven't been fiddling with a product originally written in C++ in 1998 for 20 years.
Furthermore, your solution is comprehensive enough that it covers most of the existing functionality of the old products in the space, and it ticks all of the same compliance checkboxes too. So there's very little career risk associated to buying it. You even took the customer to the same old restaurant you used to take him when he was buying HP software from you!
Another popular example of this strategy is Zoom. What is Zoom? GoToMeeting/Webex, but new.
On the lower end of the market, there is more entertainment, because not everyone that had legacy products want to pay through the nose for the pleasure of dealing with an army of Service Now suits. This is where companies like Freshworks, Atlassian and ours (InvGate) come in.
Source: founder of InvGate, mid-market player in the same space
- mandeepj 5y ago> "old, but new" If we end-up in a similar discussion after 10\20 years, your comment would still be valid because Chatting, Operations software are part of very basic needs of any org. So, at that time, your comment also would be - "old, but new" :-) It's a cycle and it goes on :-)
- sofixa 5y agoYou're spot on, besides this part: > Another popular example of this strategy is Zoom. What is Zoom? GoToMeeting/Webex, but new Zoom is drastically better than WebEx and GoTo*. It actually works cross-platform and has much less hassle.
- gomox 5y agoI agree that it's better, but that's the point. It's better in the same way that Service Now is better than HP Service Manager: It's essentially the same product, but started from scratch 10-20 years later. There is value to that, and going all the way to IPO by succeeding against second system syndrome for 10 years straight is no small feat. This is as opposed to other companies that actually change the way things are done (i.e. GMail is not "Outlook, but new").
- woleium 5y agomostly only because of web-rtc support in browsers though
- 1cvmask 5y agoI wholeheartedly agree with you with the exception of Zoom. We started to Zoom over 5 years ago and it was shockingly better than everything else we had used and tried (almost of them). The great thing is a lot of their competition have slightly improved their game as well which rarely happens in Enterprise software. Companies usually continue to use crappy enterprise products despite much much better startup alternatives out there.
- gomox 5y agoLike I said to the other commenter, I agree that Zoom was better than the alternatives. I'm just saying it's the same product as Webex. They didn't come up with a new concept or new technology or a new business model. They just made a higher quality wrench. Which is totally fine, and is clearly worth a lot of money. People need wrenches.