The Biggest Software Companies Operating In The World Today

The "Forbes Global 2000" is a ranking of the top 2,000 public companies in the world. These ranking are based on 4 principal factors: market value, profit, sales, and assets. Each company on the list is characterized by its specific industry. This article takes a look at the top “Software and Programming” companies as featured on the Forbes Global 2000 list.

Microsoft

Microsoft, founded on April 4, 1975, is the biggest software company in the world with headquarters located in Redmond, Washington in the US. It has an annual sales rate of $97.58 billion. This multinational company produces various technology products, including: electronics, computer software, and personal computers. In May of 2011, Microsoft purchased Skype Technologies and in December of 2016, went on to purchase Linkedin. Although Microsoft’s growth was originally centered around personal computer operating systems, it has since lost a large share of that market to Android. It has, however, grown in the IBM-PC compatible operating systems and the office software suite markets.

Oracle

Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977 and is the second biggest software company in the world with headquarters located in Redwood City, California in the US. It has an annual sales rate of $38.8 billion. This multinational company develops database software, cloud engineered systems, customer management software, and supply chain management software. In 2004, this company acquired PeopleSoft, Hyperion, and Siebel Systems.

SAP

SAP, which in English stands for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing, is a German multinational company with headquarters in the city of Walldorf in Baden-Wurttemberg. Founded in June of 1970, SAP is now considered the third largest software company per revenue in the world. It has an average sales rate of $23.3 billion. It has more than 335,000 customers in 190 countries. Since 2012, SAP has purchased several cloud-based companies in an attempt to compete with Oracle, its largest competitor. In 2014, SAP and IBM partnered up to market cloud-based services with IBM providing the infrastructure. Since then, SAP has also partnered with Microsoft in an effort to provide data visualization tools and better mobile applications.

Symantec

Symantec is based on Mountain View, California in the US. It was founded in 1982 with a National Science Foundation grant and originally intended to develop artificial-intelligence related products. Today, it produces security, storage, and backup software and is considered the fourth largest software company in the world. It has an annual average sales rate of $6.6 billion. In October of 2014, the company decided to split into two distinct organizations, one focused on information management and the other focused on security. This plan was realized in January of 2016, when Veritas Technologies was created and sold to The Carlyle Group.

VMware

VMware, founded in 1998, is the fifth largest software company in the world with headquarters located in Palo Alto, California in the US. It is a subsidiary of Dell Technologies and works to provide cloud services and virtualization software. VMware has an average sales rate of around $6 billion. Prior to becoming part of Dell, VMware was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2004. In 2007, EMC sold around 15% of the company on the New York Stock Exchange. VMware restructured its organization at the beginning of 2016 before EMC was purchased by Dell.

Other software companies can be seen in the chart published below.