Venture Capitalists Cite Software, Mobile, Security As Hot Investment Areas

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Venture capitalists and big-money investors continue to grow their influence over the enterprise technology and IT industries. So what do these big-wallet backers see in terms of industry trends?

"In enterprise software, the consumerization of IT has been a big overarching trend, and that affects a lot of things, for example, go-to-market [strategy],’ said Baiyin Zhou. Zhou works for Open View Partners, a firm that exclusively focuses on technology companies in the enterprise and B2B spaces.

Zhou cited the example of the "Dropbox" go-to-market strategy, which targeted end users before the IT department. "Eventually, IT departments said, 'Hey, everyone is using Dropbox in my organization, maybe let's talk to this company and see whether we can do a big contract. And that's how a lot of these businesses are growing,"' Zhou said.

"Mobile is obviously a huge area, and as consumers have gotten used to an incredible mobile experience with their consumer applications they use in their personal lives, they want that to flow over to business applications," said Saturn Partners' Will Coffield.

It's also no surprise that investors continue to look for young, agile security companies providing disruptive solutions for huge companies.

"Where we're spending a lot of time is overall IT security and how were are a lot of 1.0, 2.0 technologies that really large enterprises spent a lot of money purchasing and implementing but not necessarily using. So we're seeing a new wave of technologies that are disrupting the IT security space," said Holly Maloney of North Bridge Growth Equity.

PUBLISHED APRIL 13, 2015