SDForum Venture Finance SIG September 17, 2008

The Enterprise Services (not software) Revolution: The next wave of startups targeting companies

While much of the attention has been on the consumer internet and social media, there has been a steady resurgence of entrepreneurial ventures targeting the enterprise. One of the key trends is the continued delivery of application and infrastructure software as a service.

For example, at the application layer, in addition to the continued launch of SaaS applications targeting various verticals and horizontal areas within companies, we are seeing the emergence of "Enterprise 2.0", companies that use techniques from social networking and other consumer oriented internet applications to enable more spontaneous, knowledge based collaboration within the enterprise.

Meanwhile, innovation continues at the infrastructure layer as well. We have begun to see the emergence of "cloud computing" and "platform-as-a-service (PaaS)" offerings, which allow developers to create and deploy Web applications via the cloud which users can then access from anywhere. Amazon's EC2, S3, and SimpleDB services, Salesforce.com, Joyent, and Google's App Engine are all making noise in this space, while smaller companies such as Bungee Labs, are seizing on the concept of providing complete cloud-based development and deployment platform services.

Join leading technology venture capital firms, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) and Morgenthaler Ventures on Wednesday, September 17th, as they host an informative session that will showcase a sampling of companies targeting this space, and describe what they look for when evaluating new products for the enterprise. Attendees will observe select entrepreneurs as they pitch the ideas for their products and services to the VC's.

Presenters
- Jim Lussier, General Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
- Ken Gullicksen, Partner, Morgenthaler Ventures

Moderator
- Tom Cervantez, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP

$30 for Non-SDForum Members, $20 for members.

Official Website: http://www.sdforum.org/VFSIG