on our sales of software licenses, and to a lesser extent, also affect our renewal rates for software license updates and product support.

 

We may fail to achieve our financial forecasts due to inaccurate sales forecasts or other factors.   Our revenues, and particularly our new software license revenues, are difficult to forecast, and as a result our quarterly operating results can fluctuate substantially. We use a “pipeline” system, a common industry practice, to forecast sales and trends in our business. Our sales personnel monitor the status of all proposals and estimate when a customer will make a purchase decision and the dollar amount of the sale. These estimates are aggregated periodically to generate a sales pipeline. Our pipeline estimates can prove to be unreliable both in a particular quarter or over a longer period of time, in part because the “conversion rate” of the pipeline into contracts can be very difficult to estimate. A variation in the conversion rate, or in the pipeline itself, could cause us to plan or budget incorrectly and adversely affect our business or results of operations. In particular, a slowdown in information technology spending or economic conditions generally can reduce the conversion rate in particular periods as purchasing decisions are delayed, reduced in amount or cancelled. The conversion rate can also be affected by the tendency of some of our customers to wait until the end of a fiscal period in the hope of obtaining more favorable terms. In addition, we have limited experience regarding how the PeopleSoft pipeline will convert into actual sales. Because a substantial portion of our software license revenue contracts are completed in the latter part of a quarter, and our cost structure is largely fixed in the short term, revenue shortfalls tend to have a disproportionately negative impact on our profitability. A delay in even a small number of large software license transactions could cause our quarterly results to fall significantly short of our predictions.

 

Our success depends upon our ability to develop new products and services, integrate acquired products and services and enhance our existing products and services.   Rapid technological advances and evolving standards in computer hardware, software development and communications infrastructure, changing and increasingly sophisticated customer needs and frequent new product introductions and enhancements characterize the enterprise software market in which we compete. If we are unable to develop new products and services, or to enhance and improve our products and support services in a timely manner or to position and/or price our products and services to meet market demand, customers may not buy new software licenses or renew software license updates and product support. In addition, standards for network protocols, as well as other industry adopted and de facto standards for the internet, are rapidly evolving. We cannot provide any assurance that the standards on which we choose to develop new products will allow us to compete effectively for business opportunities in emerging areas.

 

Following the PeopleSoft acquisition, we