FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In an effort to recognize applications vendors with revenues of less than $100 million who are adapting and innovating around key trends in the applications market, International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new report highlighting a set of "Innovative Application Software Companies Under $100M to Watch" for 2011.
To identify the 2011 Innovative Application Software Companies Under $100M to Watch, IDC solicited entries from applications vendors with annual revenues of less than $100 million who exemplified one or more of three key trends in applications today. These trends are:
- Commerce 2.0: The resurgence of eCommerce, driven by the increasing importance of providing a social customer experience, the proliferation of context aware mobile apps, and the emergence of new social tools, is leading to an innovative commerce experience that is a combination of social, mobile, online, and brick and mortar. Underlying this shift in commerce are new technologies, platforms, and applications that will power the next generation of customer commerce experience.
- Social Business Solutions: This category of software includes enterprise social solutions that support the transformation to a social business. Solutions could be social platforms that enable communities, blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, or other social collaboration and business functions and applications, or other innovative social business software tools.
- Socialytics: Analytic applications that listen, collect, and analyze social data like emails, IMs, blogs, social communities and networks, microbogs, etc., using techniques like behavioral modeling to provide actionable business insights.
Companies were judged on these criteria as a measure of their driving innovation in applications software. The companies selected in the applications category for 2011 are (in alphabetical order):
- CSOFT
- DoubleDutch
- GX Software
- Hearsay Social
- Newsgator Technologies, Inc.
- ShopIgniter
- Socialware
- Yammer
Honorable Mention
- Marketo
"The social Web, new commerce models that incorporate mobile and social technologies, socialytics, and an increased use of mobile in the enterprise are all impacting businesses and the enterprise application software needed to help drive business change," said Michael Fauscette, group vice president, Software Business Solutions. "Contributing to much-needed innovation in enterprise software is a group of small companies with the vision and technology to help businesses deal more effectively with the new business environment."
The IDC study, Innovative Application Software Companies Under $100 Million to Watch, 2011 (IDC #230938), profiles each of the selected companies based on their exemplification of one or more of the identified trends. These criteria were selected from IDC's Worldwide Software Business Solutions 2011 Top 10 Predictions: The Hyperconnected Enterprise (IDC #226541).
IDC's "Innovative Companies Under $100M to Watch" reports are a qualitative evaluation of a set of vendors within a specific market – they are not a stack ranking nor do they represent an exhaustive evaluation of all companies in a segment or a comparative ranking of the companies in the report. IDC solicited entries from vendors of less than $100 million that exemplify specific key trends and respondents were asked to submit case studies that represented one of the three software application trends that were used as the basis for this year's award. These case studies were evaluated individually and independently by applications analysts across several predetermined criteria. The teams then met to review the scores that had been collected for the competing vendors. When significant differences in analyst opinion were discovered, the analysts debated the reasoning behind their scoring with an IDC vice president acting as moderator until a final list was chosen.
About IDC
IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 100 countries. For more than 47 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.
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