It's happening already, you just don't hear about it because enterprise software shops usually sell direct to their customers and don't care for publicity outside of their industry.
The curious thing is that this time, consumer companies seem to be leading enterprise companies in technology, and much of the bleeding-edge innovation happens in the consumer market. My boss remarked about this to me - in the past, enterprise tools have been far ahead of the consumer apps technologically. Software features that made it to home PCs in the mid-90s were available on enterprise workstations in the early 80s, and in some cases the consumer market still hasn't caught up (take a look at early Lisp Machines for an example of what was possible then). Nowadays, it seems like Google and Yahoo have locked up many of the best developers, and the features that come out of Google/Yahoo!Finance often are better than the equivalent features from, say, Bloomberg.
I'm not really sure what this means for the enterprise market. Probably not good.
Technological advance in general is a good thing, obviously :). The developers will follow the money as their investors will, and if the consumer market gets saturated and looses momentum while the business side starts picking up, with businesses willing to actually pay to use services, then the developers will follow.
The curious thing is that this time, consumer companies seem to be leading enterprise companies in technology, and much of the bleeding-edge innovation happens in the consumer market. My boss remarked about this to me - in the past, enterprise tools have been far ahead of the consumer apps technologically. Software features that made it to home PCs in the mid-90s were available on enterprise workstations in the early 80s, and in some cases the consumer market still hasn't caught up (take a look at early Lisp Machines for an example of what was possible then). Nowadays, it seems like Google and Yahoo have locked up many of the best developers, and the features that come out of Google/Yahoo!Finance often are better than the equivalent features from, say, Bloomberg.
I'm not really sure what this means for the enterprise market. Probably not good.