For software entrepreneurs, 2009 is a pivotal year. The market recovery that started in 2004 after an abrupt decline in the early part of the decade has rapidly decelerated because of the current financial crisis. Customers are demanding higher levels of collaboration, personalization, improved usability all while a combination of economic and business forces have combined into a whirlwind of change facing software CEOs and their companies.

Our software CEO clients face major forces that are changing the market conditions and business models. Time frames for planning, development, and delivery are collapsing.

Helping You Make Smart Decisions

We have helped our software clients examine carefully the key issues shaping their business decisions:

Technology
• "My time" and "my device" computing, virtualization, technology convergence, service-oriented architectures, Web services, open source, Web 2.0

Delivery
• Software as a service (SaaS), global delivery models, Web platforms, cloud computing, IT Utility, IT outsourcing.

Business
• Business performance and transparency, regulations (compliance, corporate and IT governance), corporate social responsibility and green IT, consumerization, collaborative working and sharing, content and data proliferation

Doom & Gloom

Contrary to what the "doom & gloom" news headlines might suggest, Arbor Advisors is seeing strong demand for the growing technology companies we advise. To characterize merger & acquisition activity as dead or drying up is vastly incorrect. Much of the still significant deal volumes in recent months have revolved around smaller deals (targets with less than $100mm in revenue). These transactions do not depend on large financial institutions and global credit markets.

Here are just some of the areas Arbor specializes in:

• Business Intelligence
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Data Integration & Warehousing
• Digital content creation
• E-discovery
• E-mail and calendaring
• Enterprise content management (ECM)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Lead Management
• Office suites
• Project and portfolio management (PPM)
• Search and information access
• Security/Risk
• Social software
• Storage/Archiving
• Supply chain management (SCM)
• Team collaboration
• Web conferencing

Arbor professionals focus specifically on certain industry areas and can help companies better understand and navigate the investment landscape in their industries.