Microsoft still king of enterprise software, go figure

When it comes to the software business Microsoft is pretty much untouchable, this according to the latest Gartner report on worldwide software revenue in 2013

According to the tech research and advisory company, the worldwide software revenue totaled just over US$407-billion in 2013, a 4.8 per cent increase from 2012 revenue of US$388.5 billion. Developed markets saw significant growth in the past year offsetting the relative sluggishness in emerging markets.

According to the report, the software industry is in the middle of a “multiyear cyclical transition” as organisations are focusing investment on technologies to support existing system structure. The way Gartner sees it, the reason for this is o these software giants can maintain competitiveness, while still taking advantage of cloud/subscription-based pricing where it makes sense to grow and advance the business.

Though Microsoft retains its number position sawing a six percent growth in the past year, its hardly surprising, Microsoft makes the bulk of its money through enterprise software. What Gartner notes is interesting that other software makers are also climbing up the table.

“There is a shift in vendor rankings from 2013 at the top of the worldwide software market,” said Chad Eschinger, research vice president at Gartner. “This is the first time in Gartner’s global software market share research that Oracle has ranked second in terms of total software revenue with US$29.6 billion and capturing 7.3 per cent of the global market. Global trends around big data and analytics with business investment in database and cloud-based applications helped to drive Oracle’s top-line growth.”

“The software market has been changing shape over the past five years, and cloud is driving the bulk of this change as software vendors acquire and provide applications and infrastructure technology to support the cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) movement,” said Joanne Correia, research vice president at Gartner. “A clear indicator of this is that for the first time we have a pure cloud vendor in the top 10.”

Salesforce.com, saw the highest growth with more than US$3.8 billion in revenue during 2013 and a 33.3 percent increase, climbing two positions into the top ten table of the worldwide enterprise software market. Salesforce.com has also moved into the top five for overall application revenue.

“Investors continue to focus on revenue growth and market share gains as the primary criteria when evaluating vendors,” said John Rizzuto, research vice president and Invest analyst at Gartner. “At this point, the new and emerging technology markets in software, such as digital marketing and public cloud computing, are so nascent that investors are favouring those companies that are early and aggressive in grabbing both market and mind share — in many cases dismissing progress on earnings and cash flow in hopes that they will one day follow.”