Most people would agree, and Robert Scoble probably said it best, enterprise software isn't sexy. In fact, I'd understand if the words "extensible enterprise productivity suite" put you to sleep.
But what if I said a game-changing Web 2.0 entrepreneur and his star engineer are leaving Facebook to launch an extensible enterprise productivity suite. Are you a little more interested?
You should be. Since Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein announced they were leaving Facebook earlier this month, a buzz has been swirling around the Valley, and everywhere else, about what's next. Why leave Facebook? THE hot property. To outsiders it might seem like the logical path would be to simply expand Facebook with this new enterprise offering, but both have said moving Facebook off course would distract from the company's mission (making the world more open through social software) and would not be good for the company. They claim the new project requires being built around a singular focus, "with the goals of efficiency and group collaboration embedded deeply into its DNA from day 1."
They also see the new venture as complimentary to Facebook. Using some of the same authentication technology and user experience modeling they hope the new products will become as familiar to people's work life as Facebook.com is to their social lives.
Interesting. Do they mean to imply that Facebook is only meant for social/personal use? At FaceTime the only trend we see more than companies investing in enterprise collaboration and productivity suites, is that these applications are rarely just used for one purpose - business or personal - but for both. Another common trend...no one application rules the roost, enterprise-grade collaborative suites are deployed alongside consumer and other enterprise-class applications all of the time. And our customers continue to tell us this. Facebook has already been adopted by individuals and organizations for collaboration, networking and information sharing. I suspect it will remain in place as a tool for business, even as its extensible enterprise brother joins the family - one very large, loud family of big company competitors including Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco, to name a few.
This probably comes as no surprise, but seeing as FaceTime offers solutions that help manage and secure unified communications and collaborative suites, we like enterprise software. I'll admit it's not Angelina Jolie sexy, but it's certainly not boring. I think it will be interesting to see what two guys with a consumer-based social networking background do for enterprise software and the collaboration market. If you're questioning whether they hitched their wagons to the wrong star, you might consider what Hutch Carpenter had to say:
Rosenstein and Moskovitz are deeply ingrained at Facebook. They've been there for a while, and have seen it blossom as the go-to social network. They've were there for the heady valuation of $15 billion. The pre-IPO company still has work in front of it, but surely it's pretty interesting.
So what do they do? They quit to go start a BORING enterprise software company.
What could this possibly tell us?
If you read the full post you'll learn Carpenter's with me on this one - enterprise software, not so boring. So what will the Rosenstein/Moskovitz decision tell us? I don't know yet, but we're listening.
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