Microsoft, Oracle, IBM still rule enterprise software: But look out, here comes the cloud
While tech giants such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM still account for the lion's share of enterprise software revenues, the cloud is having a major impact on how the industry looks.
Worldwide software revenue totalled $407.3bn last year, a 4.8 percent increase from 2012 revenues of $388.5bn according to figures from analyst Gartner, which said the software industry is in the middle of a "multiyear cyclical transition".
Microsoft continues to be the unquestionable enterprise software giant, its $65.7bn in revenue more than double that of its nearest rival Oracle, which this year narrowly overtook IBM ($29.6bn in revenue versus $29.1bn). Gartner said Oracle's strong showing was thanks to trends such as big data and analytics.
The software market has been changing shape over the past five years, and cloud is driving the bulk of this change, said Joanne Correia, research vice president at Gartner, as big software vendors buy or build the technology to support their customers' cloud and the Internet of Things projects.
Top 10 Worldwide Software Vendors, Worldwide, 2012-2013
| Rank 2013 | Rank 2012 | Vendor | 2013 Revenue ($bn) | 2012 Revenue ($bn) | Growth % |
| 1 | 1 | Microsoft | 65.7 | 62.0 | 6 |
| 2 | 3 | Oracle | 29.6 | 28.7 | 3.4 |
| 3 | 2 | IBM | 29.1 | 28.7 | 1.4 |
| 4 | 4 | SAP | 18.5 | 16.9 | 9.5 |
| 5 | 5 | Symantec | 6.4 | 6.4 | -0.8 |
| 6 | 6 | EMC | 5.6 | 5.4 | 4.9 |
| 7 | 7 | HP | 4.9 | 5.0 | -2.7 |
| 8 | 9 | VMware | 4.8 | 4.2 | 14.1 |
| 9 | 8 | CA Technologies | 4.2 | 4.3 | -2.6 |
| 10 | 12 | Salesforce.com | 3.8 | 2.9 | 33.3 |
Source - Gartner April 2014
"A clear indicator of this is that for the first time we have a pure cloud vendor in the top 10," she said.
Salesforce.com with $3.8bn in revenue during 2013, climbed two positions to capture the number ten slot in the worldwide enterprise software market.
While its revenues are little more than six percent of those of Microsoft, the cloud company is by far the fastest growing of the top 10, clocking up a 33.3 percent increase in revenue between 2012 and 2013. Gartner said it has also moved into the top five for overall application revenue.