Super Angel Jeff Clavier: Consumerization of Enterprise Software

Super angel Jeff Clavier recently offered his opinion on the latest software trends likely to influence enterprises.

He pinpointed some major drifts he expected to see across the enterprise software landscape, and his opinion carries weight.

Clavier vetted enterprise solutions for the financial industry from 1988 to 2000. And he’s invested in over 75 startups in the last 6 years, mostly in the consumer space, at the helm of his firm SoftTech VC.

The super angel told NetworkWorld:

Innovation is slower on the enterprise side, beset by security issues. It’s a mature market with only a few acquirers; sales are more difficult and investors have little leverage when there are so few buyers.

Low cost, consumer applications that leverage the Web offer capital efficiencies not matched on the enterprise side – and they are fun to work with.

“The main trend is the consumerization of the enterprise,” Clavier suggests.

A move that is a direct result of the widespread consumer-style user interfaces in the likes of Flickr and Facebook.

Clavier believes the gap between the apps we use at home and those we use in the enterprise needs to converge. He sees consumer technologies going to the enterprise, rather than the other way around.

“Simple, easy-to-build, easy-to-learn, easy-to-use consumer-style apps will increasingly be used to power enterprises.”

He says web-based tools built for individuals as well as large and small businesses will prevail. And they’ll follow the 37signals model — something he labels as the “anti-Swiss Army Knife” approach to building enterprise applications.

“Startups I’ve funded in that space really bring that very narrow focus on doing something really well at a price which is extremely competitive, and basically wins against the traditional incumbents that were built 10 years ago.” He said.

In a sense it’s back-to-basics for the enterprise software market, with buzz words like “user-friendly” and “consumer-style” systems chosen and adapted to power enterprises.

Changes ahead for enterprise architectures will include more private cloud-based computing and the ability for cloud systems to inter-operate, notes Clavier.