Mr. DiFucci: Right now, the names I cover - companies that really have applications by the traditional definition - are Oracle (ORCL), which has ERP and CRM and then a bunch of vertical applications; PROS Holdings (PRO), which is a smaller, pricing- and revenue-optimization software company; and then Microsoft (MSFT). But now, there are obviously other names out there like Salesforce.com (CRM) and all the other software service names, which I don't cover right now, and SAP (SAP). Most of the names I cover right now are infrastructure names. But we do a lot of work on the industry.
TWST: From a general perspective, how is business faring in this economy? The
conventional wisdom is that hardware sales are down but software companies are
holding up well.
Mr. DiFucci: Yes. First off, we should make it clear what application software
is. Typically people distinguish between application software and enterprise
software. Application software, typically, is software that you and I as
consumers of technology would use, like your HR software - your HR application
where you log in to try to figure out what you want to do for your 401(k) and
your healthcare benefits, stuff like that - versus infrastructure software,
which might be the database underneath that application that you're not going to
deal with, like what the stuff CA (CA) sells that helps you manage your IT
assets, the things that the guys in the data center use. But sometimes, people
talk about application software to mean all of those things.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CA, MSFT, ORCL, PRO, SYMC, TIBX, VMW
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