2009

Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

We begin Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations with an overview of our key operating business segments and significant trends. This overview is followed by a discussion of our critical accounting policies and estimates that we believe are important to understanding the assumptions and judgments incorporated in our reported financial results. We then provide a more detailed analysis of our results of operations and financial condition.



Business Overview

 

We are the world’s largest enterprise software company. We develop, manufacture, market, distribute and service database and middleware software as well as applications software designed to help our customers manage and grow their business operations. We believe our internal, or organic, growth and continued innovation with respect to our software products and services offerings provide the foundation for our long-term strategic plan. We invest billions of dollars in research and development each year to enhance our existing portfolio of products and services and to develop new products, features and services. Our internally developed offerings have been enhanced by our acquisitions.

 

We are organized into two businesses, software and services, which are further divided into five operating segments. Each of these operating segments has unique characteristics and faces different opportunities and challenges. Although we report our actual results in U.S. Dollars, we conduct a significant number of transactions in currencies other than U.S. Dollars. Therefore, we present constant currency information to provide a framework for assessing how our underlying business performed excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. An overview of our five operating segments follows.

 

Software Business

 

Our software business, which represented 81%, 80% and 79% of our total revenues in fiscal 2009, 2008 and 2007, respectively, is comprised of two operating segments: (1) new software license revenues and (2) software license updates and product support revenues. On a constant currency basis, we expect that our software business revenues generally will continue to increase due to continued demand for our products, including the high percentage of customers that renew their software license updates and product support contracts, and due to our acquisitions, which should allow us to grow our profits and continue to make investments in research and development.

 

New Software Licenses:   We license our database and middleware as well as our applications software to businesses of many sizes, government agencies, educational institutions and resellers. The growth in new software license revenues that we report is affected by the strength of general economic and business conditions, governmental budgetary constraints, the competitive position of our software products, our acquisitions and foreign currency fluctuations. Our new software license business is also characterized by long sales cycles. The timing of a few large software license