Apr 11, 20232 min
It’s interesting to put our discussions about SaaS, cloud and partnerships in the context of a broader internet 💎 value chain and ecosystems within it.
🗽 Growth of top ecosystems is the #1 trend on the market (Kearney)
The largest technology players - think Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. - are expanding their footprints across the value chain.
They’re launching new services and using their scale and existing customer bases to drive success in new segments.
[e.g. the rise of their cloud marketplaces - take a look at our take - link in the end]
They are also integrating along the value chain, buying up content rights players and enabling technologies, and investing in end-user devices.
#Superapps - think WeChat, probably soon Twitter - are taking a similar direction of integrated platforms and ecosystems connecting users to many services.
💰 Internet value chain had global revenue of $6.7 Tr (2020).
This graph was built in ‘22 based on ‘20 data. Since then the market grew ~10% as the number of internet users increased from 4.6 Bn to 5.16 Bn in 2023.
Segments like #cloud are changing faster than others. Collectively global end-user spend on public cloud services is predicted to reach $591.8 billion in 2023 (Gartner).
☁️ In big picture, B2B and B2C online services and Enabling Tech stack takes ~70% of the entire value chain.
SaaS and cloud segments highlighted on the map:
✔️ Cloud-based software services
B2B: SaaS, like Xero or Salesforce
B2C: SaaS, like Google Drive, Office 365, etc.
✔️ Communication and collaboration services, includes
B2B: Slack and Microsoft Teams in
B2C: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and WeChat in
✔️ Cloud-based infrastructure and platform services
Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Alibaba
✔️ Online payment gateways and e-wallets
include PayPal, Paytm and Stripe
✔️ Systems and software
Include VPN, anti-virus software, as well as professional-grade B2B endpoint and network security by Cisco, VMware, Juniper, etc.