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Defining "Enterprise Software" is Harder than Ever


In July 2017 Microsoft announced another set of name changes and new bundles for many of their Dynamics brand products. Most significant was the release of some new products for the Business Edition.  Dynamics 365 for Operations (an enterprise edition product) and Dynamics 365 Finance (a business edition product) were both renamed Finance and Operations within their respective editions.

This reminds me that it is not easy to segment software into enterprise and small business categories. For many years, Microsoft centered its business on servers and PCs, so the number of PCs and servers at a company determined whether they were a small, medium-sized or large business. This approach no longer holds up in the era of selling apps and services.

The most complex enterprise software for manufacturing, inventory, and engineering may have only a small number of end users, but it definitely qualifies as enterprise-class software.  My company has had small company clients which found enterprise software products fit their needs better than what is targeted to small businesses.

Counting total employees is not always a good measure of determining whether a company needs enterprise software.  Some companies have large numbers of laborers who are not knowledge workers, and not every company aspires to the same level of automation.

Twenty years ago we used to joke that the difference between business and enterprise software meant that you would add another zero or two to the price tag.  This is still the case, but cloud vendors are making the entry point for even enterprise products much lower on a per user basis than traditional software licensing models.

To determine which products fit for you, you must ignore the labels and look closely at the underlying capabilities in order to make the best choices.


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