Read Like an Analyst: SaaS Stats, Tech Dinosaurs, & #ISVproblems

The B2B tech sector news stories you don’t want to miss.

ISVs are facing tough challenges.

David Grimes explores the daunting task that historically on-premise ISVs face in reinventing themselves. For these folks, it’s not easy to become large multi-tenant SaaS providers.

According to this report from Mattermark and Drift, 31 of the top 50 fastest growing B2B companies’ websites had “primary CTAs directing people to the product/service.” Only the remaining 19 had “primary CTAs directing people to talk to Sales.”

Check out this enlightening  infographic on the qualities of a perfect IT manager, the gender breakdown of IT managers, common work issues, and more.

SaaS is making the most of the spotlight.

“If a software company grows at 20% annually, it has a 92% chance of ceasing to exist within a few years.” More than 50 SaaS statistics curated into one post.  Thank you, Ryan Law.

With the emergence of self-hosted SaaS and micro SaaS applications, it’s clear that, as Justin Jackson says, “SaaS is ripe for disruption.”

Whether you work for a multi-billion dollar mega-vendor or a 10-person startup, pricing an SaaS product is one of the most difficult tasks product managers face today.

OpenView found that 72 of 104 SaaS vendors have settled on the Good/Better/Best approach for pricing their SaaS offering.

Check out this list of SaaS events happening in 2016 and 2017 to max out your conference budget.

Legacy vendors have been getting some harsh criticism lately.

Bert Hochfield gives an in-depth examination of how two tech “dinosaurs” have survived The Great Extinction (when Amazon launched AWS in 2006).

Consultant and SAP Analyst Shaun Snapp holds no punches examining SAP support and why “… SAP allocates most of its compensation for people that sell new solutions, not for those that maintain solutions.”

Mud-Slinging! Power The Enterprise calls out VCE President Chad Sakac for his “…self-serving and irresponsible Call-to-Action” against Oracle. 

AI is constantly evolving.

Google’s Quoc Le wants to “… be able to ask a machine what it’s thinking about”.

We may not yet be able to have deep and meaningful conversations with our smartphones, but talking to Cortana can be pretty amusing.

Nvidia quickly breaks down the definitions and use cases of AI, machine learning, and deep learning.

You probably already know that bots are disruptive, but this post takes a deeper look at what to expect from basic brain bots, compilation bots, and advanced bots.

This article tries to make the case that Apple is a leader in Machine Learning. iBrain, anyone?

Open source is kind of a big deal, but has it “won”?

We would be fools to forget about Linux’s 25^th birthday.  Chris Tozzi of The Var Guy reminisces on the success of Linux and his personal theories on why it succeeded where others failed.

John De Goes provides a deep look into three open source technologies, Spark, Drill, and Quasar, and what the future of NoSQL data analytics might look like.

Wired claims that open source has won.

What topics would you like to see more of in Read Like an Analyst? Let us know at info@cascadeinsights.com.

The Read Like an Analyst (RLA) roundup is curated by the Cascade Insights team. It is written by Harrison May, edited by Marketing Assistant Isabel Gautschi, with CEO Sean Campbell serving as editor-in-chief. 

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