Oracle heads up the corporate software pack

Oracle still leads the pack according to a corporate software usage study by investment research firm ChangeWave.

An October survey of 1,780 people involved with IT spending in their organisation showed Oracle once again leading the corporate software pack. Moreover, after two-consecutive quarters of slower spending growth, software purchasing trends appeared to be steadying going forward.

The study also found that 18 percent of respondents planned to spend more money on software within the next 90 days and 14 percent planned to spend less.

In terms of vendor rankings, Oracle is the new leader among BI software vendors, having experienced a sizeable eight-point increase in share to 36 percent, helped by the purchase of Hyperion. But Microsoft is a close second on 35 percent. Oracle also leads in the CRM field with 26 percent of respondents using some form of Oracle CRM software. SAP usage fell two points to 17 percent, Microsoft was flat on 16 percent while Salesforce.com (was down four points to 15 percent.

While both Oracle and Microsoft showed momentum among ERP vendors, SAP still led among ERP vendors, but fell eight points to 38 percent. In second-place, Oracle was up two points to 32 percent, but it's Microsoft that had the most momentum, up 15 points to 29 percent.