As per the new Gartner’s research, Oracle has surpassed IBM as the second largest software vendor in the world in 2013. This was measured by annual revenue.

In 2013, Oracle earned $29.7 billion of total software revenue, up 3.4 percent from $28.7 billion in 2012. IBM earned $29.1 billion in 2013, up 1.4 percent from $28.7 billion in 2012.

Oracle’s growth is the result of acquisitions in the recent years. In February 2012 it acquired Taleo for $1.9 billion, In December 2012 it acquired “Eloqua” for $871 million, and in December 2013 it acquired Responsys for $1.5 billion.

for $1.5 billion. SAP remained at the number four slot in year over year ranking. SAP earned $18.5 billion in 2013, up from $16.9 billion in 2012.

Microsoft retained its top place with its $65.7 billion in revenue for 2013, up 6 percent from $62 billion in 2012.

Salesforce.com, the ”No Software” SaaS company, entered into the list of top-ten biggest software companies for the first time, with $3.8 billion revenue in 2013, up from $2.9 billion in 2012. The subscription based solutions of SaaS vendors, is enabling customers to make investments “where it makes sense to grow and advance the business”, while spending money to support their existing systems, Gartner said.

Excluding the top ten software vendors, others are accounted for $234.6 billion of the $407.3 billion total revenue.

Top 10 Software vendors in 2013 (with Revenue in Billion dollars):

1.Microsoft ( $65.7 billion)

2.Oracle ($29.6 billion)

3.IBM ($29.1 billion)

4.SAP ($18.5 billion)

5.Symantec ($6.4 billion)

6.EMC ($5.6 billion)

7.HP ($4.9 billion)

8.VMware ($4.8 billion)

9.CA technologies ($4.2 billion)

10.Salesforce.com ($3.8 billion)