The Bozeman, Montana-based company, which claims 1,000 active clients, boasts 25 consecutive quarters of sequential revenue growth since 1998. The company said the emergence of on-demand application services has the potential to transform the enterprise application software industry by making it more affordable.
The company said analysts at IDC expect the market for on-demand application services to grow from $665m in 2003 to $3.6bn in 2008. IDC also estimates that the customer service and contact center applications market accounted for $2.6bn, or 36%, of the $7.2bn CRM applications market in 2003.
RightNow has only a tiny market share. In 2003, net income increased 24.8% to $35.9m though the net loss increased to $4.1m from $2.7m. By the first quarter of this year, it had broken into the black with net income of $80,000, up from a loss of $881,000 on revenue that increase 64.7% to $12.8m.
It achieved this growth in the face of a formidable list of competitors that include Amdocs, BMC Software, E.piphany, eGain Communications, FrontRange Solutions, IBM, Kana Software, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, salesforce.com, and Siebel Systems.
It has so far focused its business on providing solutions for customer service operations, but plans to expand its product range to broader segments of the CRM market.
RightNow’s IPO filing comes hot on the heels of a similar plan by Salesforce.com Inc, the highest profile company in the hosted CRM market, which aims to raise $115m.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire