Software companies that grew more than 20 percent last year were, for the most part, driven by merger and acquisition activity, a recent Baseline survey shows. The acquisition trend is putting more control, and power, into the hands of a few relatively well-known companies. To some extent, this trend is being dictated by the software industry's customers, as CIOs look to consolidate their vendor base. Baseline's survey amounts to a health check on the enterprise software industry and according to the results, most software companies are in pretty good shape. The 49 largest had $110 billion in revenue in 2006, 13 percent above their 2005 levels. Meanwhile, the median company grew 11 percent. Aggregate profit at the 49 biggest software companies last year was $22.4 billion, for a profit margin of 20 percent. Profitability was concentrated in the three biggest companies, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Microsoft accounted for 40 percent of the revenue and 56 percent of the profits among the companies considered.

For the full survey results:
- see the report from Baseline