He took over a software vendor, and now his company, Trading Technologies, handles more than half the electronic volume at the four biggest derivatives exchanges.

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Blinkx's technology comes from U.K.-based enterprise-software vendor Autonomy (with which the company shares a San Francisco office).

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Symantec took their eye off the ball when they acquired Veritas. 2005 was way too early for a software security vendor to attempt to mature into a tech holding company like IBM or HP.

FORBES: Symantec Does NOT Need Better Operations. It Needs Innovation.

Another company that could be dinged by a U.S. slump, paradoxically, is the German software vendor SAP.

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Another company that could be dinged by a U.S. slump, paradoxically, is the German software vendor SAP (nyse: SAP - news - people ).

FORBES: Silicon Valley Globetrotters