This last week has seen two software companies in my area of interest report great financial results. First came Software AG on January 24th 2008 reporting their best ever financial results. Then came Lombardi on January 28th 2008 announcing that they had had year-over-year revenue growth of 60 percent.

So let's look at the Software AG first. Software AG continued its high momentum growth during fiscal year 2007:

• Group revenues (IFRS) amounted to €621.3 million (2006: €483.0 million).
• Operating revenues increased by 36%, at constant currency rates.
• Licensing revenues (currency adjusted) were up 53% to €241.3 million (2006: €165.7 million).

The Enterprise Transaction Systems (ETS) business division's operating revenues for 2007 exceeded expectations and increased by 12% (currency adjusted) to €384.6 million. In the fourth quarter of 2007, revenues improved by 27%. The webMethods business division grew significantly, in effect more than doubling (at constant currency rates) its operating revenue in 2007 to €247.1 million, as a result of organic growth as well as growth through acquisitions. The ETS business division contributed approximately 61% and webMethods approximately 39% to total revenues in 2007. Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO of Software AG, said: "We are proud of having achieved the best financial results in the 38 years of our company's history. Significant factors contributing to this achievement were the acquisitions made during the year, in particular that of webMethods Inc. in the U.S.A." So, the acquisition of webMethods and the way that 2 companies went about merging has really paid dividends.

What about Lombardi? A smaller company, but a significant player in the BPM market. The highlights of Lombardi's year are summarized below:

• Year-over-year revenue grew 60 percent during 2007, with dozens of strategic customer wins and existing client deployment expansions, including three companies in the Fortune 10.
• Introduced Lombardi Blueprint, the first on-demand collaborative process planning tool that enables companies to map processes, identify problems and prioritize improvement opportunities.
• Shipped Teamworks 6, and introduced two new complementary products - Teamworks for Organization Management, and Teamworks for SharePoint 2007. It also upgraded Teamworks for Microsoft Office.
• Expanded global sales and support ecosystem, opening direct European operations as well as adding 10 additional partners and resellers located across seven countries.
• Announced major OEM and go-to-market partnerships with Capco, Enkata Technology and Progress Software.
• Continued to drive BPM industry thought-leadership by co-authoring the Object Management Group's Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM) standard specification to deliver BPM portability and interoperability, as well as OMG's Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) standard specification.

So 2007 was a good year for these two companies and that's good to see.