that we issue equity securities in connection with future acquisitions, existing stockholders may be diluted and earnings per share may decrease.

 

We may need to change our pricing models to compete successfully.   The intensely competitive markets in which we compete can put pressure on us to reduce our prices. If our competitors offer deep discounts on certain products, we may need to lower prices or offer other favorable terms in order to compete successfully. Any such changes would be likely to reduce margins and could adversely affect operating results. Our software license updates and product support fees are generally priced as a percentage of our new license fees. Our competitors may offer a lower percentage pricing on product updates and support, which could put pressure on us to further discount our new license prices. Any broadly-based changes to our prices and pricing policies could cause new software license and services revenues to decline or be delayed as our sales force implements and our customers adjust to the new pricing policies. Some of our competitors may bundle software products for promotional purposes or as a long-term pricing strategy or provide guarantees of prices and product implementations. These practices could, over time, significantly constrain the prices that we can charge for our products. In addition, if we do not adapt our pricing models to reflect changes in customer use of our products, our new software license revenues could decrease. Additionally, increased distribution of applications through application service providers may reduce the average price for our products or adversely affect other sales of our products, reducing new software license revenues unless we can offset price reductions with volume increases or lower spending.

 

We may be unable to compete effectively in a range of markets within the highly competitive software industry.   Many vendors develop and market databases, internet application server products, application development tools, business applications, collaboration products and business intelligence products that compete with our offerings. In addition, several companies offer business outsourcing as a competitive alternative to buying software. Some of these competitors have greater financial or technical resources than we do. Also, our competitors who offer business applications and application server products may influence a customer’s purchasing decision for the underlying database in an effort to persuade potential customers not to acquire our products. We could lose market share if our competitors introduce new competitive products, add new functionality, acquire competitive products, reduce prices or form strategic alliances with other companies. We may also face increasing competition from open source software initiatives, in which competitors may provide software and intellectual property free. Existing or new competitors could gain market share in any of our markets at our expense.

 

Our periodic sales force restructurings can be disruptive.   We continue to rely heavily on our direct sales force. We have in the past restructured or made other adjustments to