To offset that inevitable slowdown in new database sales, Ellison has been betting big on applications software.
Nortel will also spend heavily on Internet applications software to be sold with Nortel boxes for data centers.
We expect Oracle to continue to increase its share in the database as well as applications software market.
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As well as the long-term threat to Windows, the Internet is also changing the market for applications software.
Software now covers a maze of different industries, including applications software, operating systems, databases, the Internet, computer-aided design and networking.
If they do that again, they will put up the price of boxes, and fragment the market for applications software.
The applications software market consists of various applications like Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and Business Intelligence to name a few.
Oracle is not currently a major player in the cloud computing market and hence Salesforce.com could provide it with ample growth opportunities in applications software.
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The company is vying for market dominance with SAP the leading seller of business applications software that helps companies manage their operations (See "Smiling Oracle").
Other network features like security firewalls that often require a separate piece of hardware can be added as applications software, which could make networks cheaper and easier manage.
The ruling deals with a relatively narrow issue: Microsoft's alleged violation of a 1995 consent decree preventing the company from tying applications software to the licensing of Windows.
Hurd says HP could end up competing with Google, which plans to offer applications software over the Internet and could move into corporate videoconferencing via its recent YouTube acquisition.
Oracle mainly competes with IBM, Hewlett-Packard in the hardware business, IBM and Microsoft in database and middleware software business and SAP in the applications software business.
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In one scenario, Microsoft would be divided along functional lines: one company that makes applications software, one built around the Internet and other new media, and one that just does Windows.
Their joint research and development body, CableLabs, has written specifications for an operating system and chosen a number of software languages in which applications software for the boxes may be written.
See the top forecasts for applications software.
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So RIM, anxious to get into the tablet game and paranoid they would lose critical market share, rolled out a device with only short-range WiFi connectivity, a goofy scheme to bridge to a Blackberry for access to the Internet through a carrier, and essentially no applications software.
Further, thanks to planned investments by companies like Cisco, 3Com, Lucent, Microsoft, United Technologies, Motorola and Texas Instruments, if Congress approves normal trade with China, expect American and world markets to be flooded with ever higher-tech Chinese goods: broadband routers, telecommunications switches, semiconductors, servers, applications software and aerospace engine parts.
Future product releases will build on current software and tools, Klein says, and will probably add applications like software distribution, remote diagnostics, patches and systems management.
One company would sell the Windows operating system, another would sell software applications such as the Office software suite, and the third would sell internet-related software and services.
Some executives cite examples of 60 to 70 percent savings by replacing custom-developed internal applications with software-as-a-service alternatives sourced from the public cloud.
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SaaS software applications such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning are deployed alongside database and middleware software.
Long-term, the real innovations will come from the software applications that have yet to be developed.
Middleware is a portfolio of software products used to build and deploy software applications.
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The MS Office suite entails productivity software applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access.
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Those forerunners also promised a software revolution by hosting the software applications of companies.
Second, it is harder to make it work with a firm's existing software applications.
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