This Week in Software: Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce

July 8th, 2011 by Trefis Team
+3.11%
Upside
406
Market
419
Trefis
MSFT: Microsoft logo
MSFT
Microsoft
Microsoft

Source: Google Finance

Here’s a roundup of some important developments in the software sector. Below, we include a few stories which could influence the stocks of major companies in the sector like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), SAP (NASDAQ:SAP) and Salesforce (NASDAQ:CRM).

Microsoft

Microsoft was prominent in the news this week with some significant developments that could have an impact on its price estimate.

Relevant Articles
  1. Up Nearly 70% Since The Beginning Of 2023, Where Is Microsoft Stock Headed?
  2. Up 63% Since The Beginning Of 2023, How Will Microsoft Stock Trend After Q2 Earnings?
  3. Microsoft Stock Is Up 45% YTD And Outperformed The Consensus In Q1
  4. Microsoft Stock Outperformed The Expectations In Q4
  5. Microsoft Stock Is Fairly Priced At The Current Levels
  6. What To Expect From Microsoft Stock In Q3?

Microsoft officially launched the Office 365 software last week, which marked its foray into the cloud computing productivity software market which is dominated by Google and Salesforce.com. [1] It has received a positive response so far and should help it maintain its pole position in the productivity software market.

See Trefis article: Microsoft Eyes Upside if Office 365 Takes Off

Microsoft also entered a deal with Baidu, the leading search engine in China, under which Bing will now power the English language results on Baidu. This gives it access to a potential population of nearly 470 million internet users, and underscores a strategic win over Google. [2]\

See Trefis article: Microsoft, Baidu Duo Gets Bing into China Though Small Impact to Stock

Microsoft may also benefit from its treasure trove of patents. It has entered into patent licensing agreements with many Android device manufacturers and stands to make more than $1 billion as licensing revenues by the end of next year. [3] Besides that, rumors suggest that Microsoft may launch a preview build of Windows 8 next week.

See Trefis article: Android Patents Can Push Microsoft Past $27

Check out our complete coverage of Microsoft

Oracle

Oracle stock is up nearly 4% since the beginning of the week mainly due to a positive outlook following its Q4 2011 results. The company stands to make around $1.4 billion in damages from its patent lawsuit against Google, as well as 15% of future Android advertising revenue, which could give its bottom line a nice bump.

See Trefis article: Oracle’s Upside to $37 Value from Google Patent Lawsuit

Check out our complete coverage of Oracle


SAP

SAP’s shares are up 4% today, after being flat for most of the week. SAP announced two new products today – Sales OnDemand, a cloud based CRM application for sales professionals and Sybase 15.3. [4] Its new CRM cloud offering should help it increase its CRM marketshare by a significant amount, by the end of our forecasting period. The initial reactions to the launch have been quite positive.

See Trefis article: New Cloud Offering Could Help SAP Reach $64

Check out our complete coverage of SAP

Salesforce.com

There has been a major uptick in the stock of Salesforce.com over the course of the week. It’s up more than 6%, and has hit its 52 week high of $160.

We currently have a Trefis price estimate of $64 for Salesforce.com shares.

Check out our complete coverage of Salesforce.com

Notes:
  1. Microsoft Launches Office 365 Globally, Microsoft, June 28, 2011 [↩]
  2. Microsoft to Partner With China’s Leading Search Engine, NY Times, July 5, 2011 [↩]
  3. Can Android be Microsoft’s next $1 billion business?, GigaOm, July 6, 2011 [↩]
  4. SAP Sales OnDemand Now Generally Available, PR News Wire, July 6, 2011 [↩]