This ranking has been out of the wood for a while, but I was once again examining it when I felt I had to blog about it (and I’ve been waiting hard for the European ranking, soon to be released):

• Mind the Gap! Take a deep breath and then look at the gap between the two French leading software publishers Dassault Systèmes and Business Objects (making more than 90% of their revenues outside France by the way) and their challengers.

• Moreover, companies like Sopra Group & GFI Informatique aren’t pure players (at all, they are IT service companies), and still belong to the Top 10.

• Put together, IBM Software Group and Microsoft account for one fourth of France’s total software investments.

• Financial software is getting hotter and hotter (and we frogs are very good at it): GL Trade, Cartesis, Soltim-Proval (insurance) and Linedata Services are all Top 20 pure players.

• I’m glad to see search engine Exalead & object-oriented development tools company Wyde in the ranking, since I got to meet recently both Guillaume Mainbourg, a general manager at Exalead France, who runs a seminar at Ecole Centrale Paris where I’m studying, and Jean-René Lyon, the founder of Wyde, who came to give us a lecture about entrepreneurship recently.

• There are plenty of opportunities for bright entrepreneurial teams devising a great software to hit the top 20 in more or less 5 years. The 5 keys to success in software are:

1. Maintain your hiring standards high for as long as you can and make sure everybody in the company has stock-options
2. Find a relevant, fast-growing niche positionning and try to reach a leadership position fast in your national market
3. Plan international expansion early (I said ‘plan’, not necessarily go abroad early – except if you’re in the Internet business or a B-to-C publisher – in this case, allow downloads from your website)
4. Keep your cash-burn rate super low: stop eating, sell your car, don’t go on week-ends and holidays, break up with your girlfriend, save you a rent by sleeping at the office; do whatever you can do to save yourself (and your company) cash!
5. It may seem obvious, but make sure your software rocks! Not from a geek’s viewpoint but from the client’s point of view. Using your software has to be an experience in itself (think ROI and usability).

It goes without saying, but start building your ecosystem from day 1. This is key in software. By ecosystem, I mean make sure you brightly pile up partners such as consultants, integrators, other software publishers (much bigger as well as much smaller), research centers, universities, software unions, functional unions, etc. Remember that it takes time and commitment to build an ecosystem. But in the end, your ecosystem will save you time, and many good deals.

• This is very probably French, but software publishers tend to do B-to-B and Internet companies B-to-C or C-to-C. Consequently, there aren’t enough French B-to-C software companies (like Avanquest Software, ex-BVRP – thank you Julien for reminding it to me) and French B-t-B Internet companies (like Hubwoo or BlueKiwi).

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