What kinds of software are showing the most promise for growth?
In spite of our view that enterprise software is a maturing industry, we believe that there are several segments that will show attractive growth rates and continue to rank high on the list of spending priorities of chief information officers and other executives involved in the purchasing decision, including security software and business intelligence software. Customer relationship management (CRM) has recently reemerged as an area of growth after several years of stagnation — although this may have been brought on by the rising popularity of on-demand delivery of CRM software. These segments are expected to display above-average growth in future periods. For example, IDC projects a 14% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue for security software from 2004 through 2009. For business intelligence tools, the CAGR forecast is 9.2% for the same period. Following big deals such as Oracle buying Siebel Systems, do you see more consolidation coming? We continue to believe the ente
