All the major enterprise software vendors increased their revenues in 2010, but Oracle grew substantially faster than others like IBM, Microsoft and SAP, according to Gartner.
The overall enterprise market itself grew by $20 billion — a healthy 8.5% — to hit $245 billion, thanks in part the $6 billion jump in Microsoft’s revenue in 2010. Microsoft benefited from the introduction of its Windows 7 operating system, which led to a round of upgrades by some enterprise customers.
Excluding consumer sales of Microsoft products, IBM was the number one vendor with a 5.7% increase in revenues to $25.4 billion.
Including consumer sales, Microsoft posted a revenue of $54.7 billion, up 12.5%.
The third vendor, according to size, was Oracle, which grew its revenues 19.4% to $23.9 billion — the fastest growth among the top five.
“The year represented a return to solid footing as the market recovered and expanded in terms of revenue and geographies,” Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner.
“However, some regions did not recover as rapidly as others. Japan and Western Europe saw relatively modest dollar-denominated growth, while Latin America and Asia/Pacific saw growth in the mid-to-high teens, nearly double the market average,” she added.
Microsoft’s total software revenue results have been improved by new strategies aimed not only at individuals, but also at organizations and multiple delivery models, it added.
“The company is placing more emphasis on enterprise application and infrastructure software programming platforms,” it said.