This month’s Lighthouse Software Index has Symantec gaining 2 positions to end at the 6th spot. Thanks to its announcement to acquire Altiris, the analyst community has certainly been busy writing about the long term impact of the latests of Symantec’s purchases. The news and analysis of the acquisition has also brought focus on Altiris as is shown by a 16 position jump in its position.
As normal, the biggest movement is lower down in the chart. Websense (+24) is the biggest gainer in this month’s Lighthouse Software Index as focus on its solutions rises, especially after its Websense Web Security Suite was named the Best Web Filtering Solution by the SC Magazine. Synopsys (Nasdaq: SNPS), a provider of semi-conductor design software, is not far behind with a gain of 20 positions. That firm has gained focus not just from some excellent financial results but also from the dropping of all anti-trust charges against the firm by Magma.
Analyst focus has sharply reduced on SAS as it plunges 18 positions to end at 51st position. The firm has been growing at a very fast pace with 30th consecutive year of revenue growth and record $1.9 billion in revenue. However, it has had a very quite month, and is yet to get many analysts talking about the outcome of the proposed plan of SAS and Accenture to work together.
Talking a bit about the top 25 firms, this month sees the entry of Veritas (22), mySQL (21), Check Point (25) and SPSS (24) in the top 25 list. The positions for these 3 firms have been vacated by the departure of Business Objects (at 28), Sage (27), Tibco (29) and Infor (26) from the top 25. Sage and Infor should not be worried, since their presence in the top 25 presented an unusual blip. However, Business Objects and Tibco were often in the low teens up until the middle of last year: they both seem to have been overtaken by competitors ramping up their AR.
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