Doom and gloom is pervasive in both press and company outlooks and the venture community as been abuzz about the end of the 'good times.'

Having worked consistently for early stage companies working to penetrate the enterprise for the past decade or so, I'm not sure there have been any recent 'good times.'

I have not found enterprise IT budgets to be lavish nor have I found sales cycles to be short or decision criteria to be lax.  I have experienced quite the opposite.

Building an enterprise focused business is hard and the good times have not been seen since the euphoria of the '98-'01 time frame if you define good times as the suspension of basic business principles and a welcoming market for broad innovation.

Actually, I would argue that there is still a hangover due to all the new, new things enterprises consumed during that period creating significant skepticism and caution in the following years.  The bar has already been high and will only get higher going forward.