07.03.23 In April 2020, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a company earnings call, “We have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.” Indeed, as the world went into lockdown, companies quickly facilitated remote working systems, stores raced to facilitate online orders and curbside pickup, and Michelin-starred chefs joined fast-food restaurants on food delivery apps. As a result, software revenue growth accelerated. In 2020, video meeting minutes on Zoom rose 31-fold to an annualized 3.2 trillion minutes and the gross value of sales on Shopify’s ecommerce platform rose 96% year on year to USD 120 billion. Three years on from the start of the pandemic, as economies around the world have reopened, and as companies take stock of varied digital initiatives, software growth has slowed. According to technology market analysis firm IDC, Software as a Service (SaaS) revenues expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 27% over the last five years. IDC expects this growth to decelerate to 20% over the next four years. That said, while the SaaS deceleration has been jarring to valuations, the sector is still growing more than twice as fast as the broader software industry, and nearly three times faster than the technology industry as a whole. Effective transformations are more of a marathon than a sprint.
Source: IDC, Bloomberg 2023