This is actually one of the things we consciously look for: companies that are turning businesses that didn't use to be software businesses into software businesses.
A funny anecdote from a customer of mine, make of it what you will:
They're in an absurdly low-tech niche. I'm going to call it gardening. Their business model since the dawn of time has been "You call us up, we send a van of guys to your house, they uses scissors to trim your bushes."
Five years ago they got a brochureware website, but they were still doing everything the same way: phone, van, guys, scissors.
Then came Groupon, of all things. See, their number one problem was getting more bushes to trim. Groupon solved that very efficiently, but now they had a different problem: paper no longer scaled sufficiently to schedule everybody. So they started tracking their phoned-in appointments in (I think) Google Calendar.
This pretty much opened the floodgates. They now use one of the help desk SaaSes because the email volume was getting too big and the business owner and office manager were having communication issues. Both of them bought iPhones so that they could run the business from the road, because the owner of a small gardening firm still needs to use scissors on occasion. They bought Appointment Reminder to free the office manager from X00 phone calls per month, so she can spend the time taking bookings and managing their (packed-to-capacity-and-beyond) schedule again. Things are booming.
They're now a software, van, guys, scissors business... and the owner is a wee bit weirded out by it.
How are they a software business? They are not developing software just consuming it. Is not much different than using a cellphone. You wouldn't call them a technology company because of that.
They are clearly on the track to developing their own software; if they don't, a similar business in the same situation will.
How long before they want to book orders via website? Unless there is an OpenTable for gardeners I am unaware of, that will require some custom code.
How long before they want to join their calendar and help desk software? How long before they want email logs integrated into the help desk? Those are custom software opportunities.
One of the most interesting things happening in software right now is how easy it has become to write just a little bit of it. The idea of a gardener developing, or directing the development of, custom code would have been laughable 20 years ago. With PHP and MySQL and ubiquitous cheap web/app hosts and proliferating web APIs, it's become increasingly common.
Many of those are enterprise software for Luddite companies. The sales process is slow, long and painful. I founded a startup for a little enterprise niche and I now have a profound respect for salespeople. The tech is easy, but getting a meeting is insane.
This. I work for a larger company that resells our enterprise asset management software (among others). Recently we received a document from a potential client with the question, "Can you import our data into your system?". The format of said document? A PDF with scanned in diagrams of things.
I had a chairman during the first dot-com bubble who would carry around a copy of 'Blown to Bits'[1] and read from it like it was his bible.
It is the earliest source, that I know of, of the theory that software and the web will destroy every other industry - and it was from the mid-90s (the HBR article was).
