November 11th, 2009
Putting SaaS revenue in perspective
Software as a service enterprise revenue is expected to hit $7.5 billion, up 17.7 percent from 2008, according to a report this week from Gartner. That’s a pittance compared to the current enterprise software giants.
Now $7.5 billion is a decent chunk of change, but here’s the reality:
- $7.5 billion in SaaS revenue is less than the sales garnered by Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division for the year ended June 30 ($7.75 billion).
- $7.5 billion is less than a third of Oracle’s annual revenue of $23.2 billion. And Oracle collected $11.7 billion in fiscal 2009 license updates and product support revenue.
- For the nine months ended Sept. 30, SAP reported total revenue of 7.48 billion euro ($11.2 billion at current exchange rates).
The good news is that Gartner projects SaaS revenue to top $14 billion in 2013. That’s big news right? Well not really.
- Microsoft pulled in $14.7 billion in client revenue for the year ending June 30.
- Microsoft’s business division (Office) had fiscal 2009 revenue of $18.9 billion.
- In 2008, IBM had software revenue of $22.08 billion.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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