If you read the headline and thought, "Well, it must be because enterprise software companies spend so much on R&D, and so charge a lot of money to recoup their heavy investments!" you would be wrong. Very wrong. If you thought, "It must be because they have consigned themselves to an inane sales model that requires high-priced sales and marketing to fool customers into buying their software," you'd be closer to the truth.
These were my thoughts as I read Jason Maynard's analysis of why Tibco's growth has stalled:
We are maintaining our Neutral rating on shares of Tibco given the sluggish revenue growth and the need to add extra sales capacity in order to grow the business. With the stock trading at 12x EV/CFO it isn't expensive but it is hard to make a case for multiple expansion when it will take at least 2-3 quarters to see any signs of contribution from the sales expansion....
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Over the weekend I was surprised to see my interview with Don Marti (now transcribed) hit Slashdot. I posted a link to the podcast a few weeks ago, but I guess more people are interested in reading what Don and I discussed than hearing us discuss it. (Not that I blame them - I'd do the same.)
As mentioned before, we talked about a range of things, but I most enjoyed talking about how open source changes the sales cycle. Until you've lived it, it's hard to comprehend just how powerful - and different - open source is in the software sales process.
In Alfresco's case, making our code available under the GPL has dramatically changed (for the better) the way we interact with our prospects and customers, as I note in the interview:
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