Hot Technologies, Strategic Choices For VARs

Software is sizzling. Where should you place your bets? Following are the top 10 software technologies that your peers sell or plan to sell in the coming year, according to VARBusiness' exclusive 2005 State of Software survey.

1. ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE Computer viruses remain the scourge of corporate America. Stopping them is a huge solution-provider opportunity, judging by the number of those surveyed (55 percent) who placed antivirus software at the top of their lists of products they sell.

Symantec--Norton AntiVirus 2005
Trend Micro--PC-cillin 2005
McAfee--VirusScan 9.0
grisoft--AVG Anti-Virus Pro 7.0

2. DATABASE/DATA MANAGEMENT This venerable piece of infrastructure is part and parcel of nearly every software project. Consider this statistic: More than half of the readers we surveyed have plans to sell or recommend databases and data-management software to customers. And the market promises to get even hotter later this year with the anticipated rollout of Microsoft's next version of SQL Server 2005.

Oracle--Oracle Database 10g
IBM--DB2 Universal Database
Microsoft--SQL Server

3. FIREWALL SOFTWARE Shoring up the corporate network--inside and out--from attack plays a crucial role in our readers' businesses. Half of them push firewalls as part of their software strategy.

Zone Labs--zoneAlarm Security suite 5.5
Trend Micro--PC-cillin Internet Security 2005
F-Secure--Internet Security 2005
McAfee--Internet Security Suite 2005
Symantec--Norton Internet Security 2005

4. WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEMS While Microsoft's long-awaited Longhorn operating system hasn't yet dazzled VARs with its business potential (only 22 percent of those surveyed say they are currently prepping their customers' infrastructure for the looming OS), VARs are much more enthusiastic about selling the current Windows flavor.

Microsoft--Windows Server 2003

5. ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE Pretty basic stuff. But every company needs some form of accounting/financial-management software to help run its business, and clearly VARs find it a stable source of revenue. Nearly half of those surveyed play in the bean-counting arena.

Microsoft--Microsoft Business Solutions products (Great Plains 8.0, Navision, Solomon, Axapta)
Oracle--Oracle E-Business Suite Financials
Sage Software--Sage BusinessVision and Sage ACCPAC ERP
SAP--SAP Business One