Who will be the young software players and startups to watch in 2013, and why? We recently asked this question of our industry observers and received a variety of predictions.
Big Data, business intelligence, and analytics space
Guy Smith, chief consultant, Silicon Strategies Marketing: Without naming specific companies or founders, the players to watch will be the Big Data geeks. Advanced analytics are the next phase in wealth generation via info tech, and the Big Data folks that bridge petabytes and BI will make some good coin.
Peter Auditore, principal researcher at Asterias Research: New agile database vendors such as Cloudera, Actian and others will provide fast, affordable solutions that address the demands of Big Data.
Jeff Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies and founder of the Cloud Computing Showplace: There are many, but one worth watching is SiSense in the analytics market and Apprenaissance in the mobile environment.
Howard Dresner, president, founder and chief research officer, Dresner Advisory Services, LLC: As the business increases their influence in the purchasing process, vendors that emphasize ease of purchase, deployment, use — and time to action — will be the winners in 2013.
Joe Cordo, CMO, Extraprise: A player to watch is Appature as they have already built unstructured capabilities into their campaign management platform.
Dave Peterson, Chris Lochhead, Al Ramadan; co-founders and partners at Play Bigger Advisors: Andreesen Horowitz-funded Good Data is changing the agenda from business intelligence to monetizing business data. They are fully charged and ready to bash the legacy BI market and deliver a new way for CEOs to monetize their data.(Full disclosure: they are a Play Bigger portfolio company.)