April 28, 2011
By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Some major U.S. business software firms are expecting to get a boost in sales and profits from a predicted broad increase in technology spending, including business software -- which will cut across nearly all geographies and verticals, according to Dow Jones’s John Kell.
Some business software vendors are seeing it already, according to an analysis Kell published recently. He names Oracle (News - Alert) and “smaller players” in the business software market, including Tibco and Progress Software, who have posted higher sales and margins in their latest quarters.
But there are other business software vendors who should get a nice slice of the broad-based tech spend, as Kell describes. International Business Machines (IBM). Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters (News - Alert) expected a profit of $2.30 a share on revenue of $24.01 billion, up from income of $1.97 a share and revenue of $22.86 billion last year.
Kell notes that “IBM (News - Alert) has benefited from heavy investments in emerging countries, as well as growth areas, such as business analytics and cloud computing.” Just last month the company said its long-term roadmap “helped it report record results,” Kell said.
As Kell says, the world's biggest computer-virtualization software company VMware, “is seen earning a profit of 42 cents a share on revenue of $815 million. In the same period a year ago, VMware posted a per-share profit of 19 cents, or 32 cents excluding stock-based compensation and other items, on revenue of $634 million.” It’s majority-owned by EMC, which is targeting new markets such as India, Russia and China.
Microsoft (News - Alert) is expected to report a fiscal third-quarter profit of 56 cents a share on revenue of $16.27 billion. Plus, the company has a new partnership with Toyota to spread smart-car technology to 170 countries beginning next year, Kell reports, and earlier this year “announced a strategic alliance with Nokia (News - Alert) that will make the Windows Phone 7 operating system Nokia's new smartphone standard.”
Citrix Systems is predicted to report a profit of 42 cents a share on revenue of $475 million. The company has announced three permanent XenDesktop program trade-up offers, Kell says, “as well as a limited-time promotion called ‘Trade-Up Restart,’ which targets customers with expired subscription advantage memberships.”
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Jamie Epstein
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