Worldwide software revenue totalled $407.3 billion in 2013, a 4.8% increase from 2012 revenue of $388.5 billion, according to Gartner.

The developed geographies were the primary growth drivers offsetting the relative sluggishness in emerging markets.

The software industry is in the middle of a multiyear cyclical transition as organisations are focusing investment on technologies to support existing system structure, in order to maintain competitiveness, while still taking advantage of cloud/subscription-based pricing where it makes sense to grow and advance the business.

"There is a shift in vendor rankings from 2013 at the top of the worldwide software market," said Chad Eschinger, research vice president at Gartner. "This is the first time in Gartner's global software market share research that Oracle has ranked second in terms of total software revenue with $29.6 billion and capturing 7.3% of the global market.

“Global trends around big data and analytics with business investment in database and cloud-based applications helped to drive Oracle's top-line growth."

Salesforce.com, with more than $3.8 billion in revenue during 2013, climbed two positions to capture the number ten slot of the worldwide enterprise software market, and it achieved the highest growth among the top ten vendors at 33.3%. Salesforce.com has also moved into the top five for overall application revenue.

>See also: Gartner predicts device shipments to hit $2.5BN in 2014

"Investors continue to focus on revenue growth and market share gains as the primary criteria when evaluating vendors," said John Rizzuto, research vice president and Invest analyst at Gartner.

"At this point, the new and emerging technology markets in software, such as digital marketing and public cloud computing, are so nascent that investors are favouring those companies that are early and aggressive in grabbing both market and mind share — in many cases dismissing progress on earnings and cash flow in hopes that they will one day follow."

Top 10 software vendors, worldwide, 2012-2013 (billions of dollars)