Acquisition Outlook: Intuit, ADP

This post looks at the recent performance of Intuit and ADP. Strengthening its SaaS strategy, Intuit recently acquired PayCycle, which was at the top of my recommendation list for a SaaS roll-up.Its lineup of SaaS offerings now accounts for about $900 million in revenue, an increase of 22%, faster than the company average. We will also look at what companies it can acquire next. >>>

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Networking Landscape: Major Changes Ahead?

Last week, Brocade missed its earnings estimates for the first time in four years while last month, Alcatel-Lucent posted its first profit in 11 quarters. Let’s take a closer look at their recent performances as well as that of F5. >>>

More Strong Performance From SaaS Market Leaders

In an earlier post this month, we observed that Salesforce.com, pioneer in the SaaS sector with annual revenue of $1.077 billion, has a 10.6% share in the CRM market, and SaaS accounts for 20% in the CRM market. Salesforce.com reported a strong second quarter last week. Also last week, the CEO of Taleo, Michael Gregoire, rang the opening bell of NASDAQ to mark a decade in the talent management industry. My interview with him, conducted last year, is available here. Let’s take a closer look at Salesforce.com as well as the SaaS talent management sector. >>>

Internet Sector: Acquisition Prospects

As per a recent comScore report, US online retail sales fell 1% over the year in the second quarter, following flat sales in the first quarter and a 3% drop in the fourth quarter of last year. Obviously, the unemployment levels, rising gas prices and increased savings are keeping consumers’ discretionary spending down. >>>

HP Loses PC Top Slot

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), the leader in the PC market with annual revenue of $118.4 billion, reported third quarter results that just managed to beat estimates. CEO Mark Hurd observed that the US market remained stable in the quarter, but things are not looking so good in Europe. According to a recent report from Gartner, Acer overtook HP as the No.1 PC vendor in Western Europe. In the US market, Dell overtook HP as the No.1 with a difference of just 0.3%. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

First Solar, SunPower Should Benefit From Stimulus

Pricing pressure, supply–demand mismatch and the credit crunch have raised concerns about the short-term outlook for solar energy equipment makers worldwide. Analysts peg solar panel production at 5.5 gigawatts for the year 2009 compared to capacity of 9.9 gigawatts — a clear indication of capacity idling due to lack of demand. >>>

Concerning Utilization Rates At Indian Outsourcers

Gartner predicts that IT spending will fall 6% this year to $3.2 trillion. TPI estimates that the value of global outsourcing new contracts has fallen 22% in the first half of the year to $19 billion, with no significant improvement expected in the second half. None of these numbers paint a good picture for the $60 billion offshore Indian IT industry. NASSCOM, the Indian Software and Outsourcing industry group, recognized the impact of the recession and predicted that the software industry’s growth rate in India will fall to single digits compared with 15–16% growth last year and 30% two years ago. >>>

More SaaS Near 52-Week Highs

Through the economic downturn, marketing organizations have had to become more accountable to businesses, leading to a rise in the use of Web analytics. According to a recent Forrester report, 73% of businesses use Web analytics measurement technologies. The report goes on to say that US businesses will spend $953 million on Web analytics in 2014, with an average CAGR of 17%. Let’s take a closer look at the performance of Web analytics player Omniture. >>>

SaaS Companies Trading Near 52-week Highs

According to a recent Gartner report, the software as a service (SaaS) market is forecast to grow 22% to $8 billion in 2009. It is expected to show consistent growth through 2013 when worldwide SaaS revenue will total $16 billion for the enterprise application markets. SaaS companies Concur, RightNow and NetSuite are latching onto these trends and are trading near 52-week highs. Each of them has tremendous growth ahead as enterprises and SMB makes the transition en masse from licensed, on-premise, hard-to-manage software to the cloud model. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Online Travel: Customers Are Coming, But In Search Of Deals

According to a recent study, overall travel demand is expected to fall 11% in the year. The biggest impact will likely be on corporate travel, where budgets are expected to be down 15%. While the current quarter’s trends might suggest that demand is bottoming out, there is no denying that businesses are still restricting travel. >>>