Intershop: succeeds in dismantling the service for software vendors? – Business Week

Michael Kroker

In the first half of this year, the IT provider from Jena increased its software share of sales – but with shrinking total sales and further red numbers.

Intershop – there was something? If – sorry – very old readers with a certain eastern affinity that Keyword is expected to trigger especially memories of the chain in the former GDR, where you could buy Western products for hard currency

. middle-aged and more publicly oriented readers will Intershop contrast, think above all of one of the most adventurous roller coaster rides in recent German economic history: Intershop Communications, founded in 1994 by a native of Jena Stephan Schambach was one of the first providers of e-commerce software world – the same name for DDR-chain was so even chosen consciously.

lack of alternatives, built in the late nineties almost all local e-commerce pioneer such as the Otto Group or coffee clothes-seller Tchibo their first shops on the Internet using the Intershop software. 1998 saw the IPO in the then start-growth segment Neuer Markt. In the two and a half years until the collapse of the first dot-com bubble Intershop was considered one of the flagship company. In the top of the company, which recorded sales of 123 million euros in 2000, a whopping eleven billion Euro was worth

turn of the year 2001 burst the dream of everlasting Intershop growth -. His time broke the stock for a profit warning in just one day a more than two-thirds. Meanwhile, the share ranked at 99.9 percent below its all-time high: Today the market players assess the suppliers from Jena just with a market value of just over 37 million euros

Basic:. ​​A similar roller coaster ride as on the stock market, Intershop has enjoyed in the past fifteen years in the business strategy. Times the provider was more embarrassed in IT services and support companies in the construction of their Internet shops. For this reason, Jena the development of their own e-commerce software neglected long.

Top 10 software companies by sales in 2013

• Salesforce.com

  Sales: $ 3.8 billion

  growth 33.3 percent (year on year)

  Source: Gartner, March 2014

• CA Technologies

  8

  Sales: $ 4.2 billion

  growth: 2.6 percent

• VMware

  >
  Sales: $ 4.8 billion

  growth 14.1 percent

• HP

  Sales: $ 4.9 billion

  growth 2.7 percent

• EMC

  Sales: 5.6 billion Dollar

  growth 4.9 percent

• Symantec

  “8”

  Sales: $ 6.4 billion

  growth: 0.8 percent

• SAP

  >
  Sales: $ 18.5 billion

  growth 9.5 percent

• IBM

  Sales: $ 29.1 billion

  growth 1.4 percent

• Oracle

  Sales: $ 29.6 billion

  growth 3.4 percent

• Microsoft

  Sales: $ 65.7 billion

  growth 6.0 percent

In the meantime, the focus is at Intershop but again more lie on the product business – which at any rate, the company said at today’s presentation of its figures for the first half of 2015: in the first six months While sales declined by twelve percent to 21 million euros. The software licenses – an important indicator for software companies that sell their own products – by contrast, revenue grew loud Intershop “vigorously”, namely by 43 percent to 3.4 million euros. Including maintenance revenues increased the proportion of product business in total sales from 26 to 35 percent

Oh, profitable the company is still not -. As so often in his now two decades long history. After succeeded Intershop to reduce the losses of -4.3 million euros in the same period last year to now -0.5 million euros.

just leaves the question of how long the market the company ever gives time for those remodeling – since the market for electric and mobile commerce solutions is highly competitive

.