Will "Mobile First" Will Wipe Out The Big Software Makers?

"A lot of legacy players — folks that build enterprise apps on prior platforms — will end up being disrupted by new players who are better equipped to take advantage of the new mobile platform, says Kevin Spain, Emergence Partners general partner. That could even happen to Salesforce and SuccessFactors that grew up in the Web world, he believes.

The startups with the greatest potential to generate outsized returns are those creating “mobile-first enterprise applications” – those that leverage the unique capabilities of mobile devices to enable the creation of new categories of enterprise applications. 


These applications are very different from mobile-enabled versions of traditional enterprise software such as Salesforce.com and Workday,Spain argues.

True “mobile-first enterprise applications” are built for mobile platforms initially or exclusively and enable a worker or business to do things that simply were not possible before the proliferation of advanced connected devices.


The point is that mobile and cloud delivery and consumption of applications might have disruptive impact on industry suppliers.