Cloud Vendor Veeva Goes Public for Life Sciences
Despite uncertainty that has surrounded scientific research after the government shutdown, cloud computing company Veeva Systems went public last week and has declared that its focus will lie on the life sciences.
Priced at $20 per share, Veeva’s stock climbed 85 percent on its debut day. According to Veeva CEO Peter Gassner, its focus on life sciences is poised to help the company maintain that growth in the days to come.
After witnessing the growth of cloud computing, Gassner was ready to stay ahead of the tide with Veeva. “In 2006 I knew that the next trend was going to be industry-specific applications,” Gassner said in an interview with Fox Business’ Liz Claman. For us it’s always been a long-term business, so we never really considered the short term of government shutdown.”
Already Veeva works with big names in the life sciences industry such as Pfizer and Novartis. But when asked if the company might be forced to expand in the future, Gassner seemed content to serve what he referred to as a $1.6 trillion industry in order to deliver to it data-driven results.
“For right now we have a $5 billion addressable market for the products that we have, so we’re pretty busy.”
Part of Veeva’s success comes from its adoption of the growing pay-as-you-go business model, which only charges its customers per user per month, meaning customers don’t pay an upfront fee and don’t run the risk of investing in a service that could ultimately go to waste. In addition, Gassner pointed out that because Veeva continuously updates its software, customers also are guaranteed current software.
“The old way to do it was client-server software, where the customer had to buy the software and operate it, maintain it, et cetera. And that model just doesn’t work,” said Gassner. “And that’s why today we’re mostly replacing that legacy client-server system with this more advanced cloud-based model, per user, per month.”
In looking to bring on new talent, Gassner summed up his company’s plan for growth in the future by saying, “We’re looking for customer success-oriented people—that’s the number one value of our company. We want to move this industry forward.”
