The strongest demand for finance software in 2005 will come from middle market companies, according to a survey by AMR Research Inc., a Boston-based technology consulting company. AMR's survey of more than 400 U.S. IT executives last fall shows that 28.3% of companies with revenues between $250 million and $999 million were evaluating a software purchase for 2005, versus just 11% of companies with revenues of $1 billion or more.

John Hagerty, AMR's vice president of research, says middle market companies have improved their IT infrastructures to the point where they can use such offerings. The demand also reflects the fact that vendors are tweaking products to let users do more work in Excel, thus making them easier to use, Hagerty says. He expects the demand to center on business intelligence and planning and budgeting software. Of the business intelligence vendors, Business Objects should benefit most from middle market demand because of the technology it acquired from Crystal Decisions, Hagerty says, and in planning, SRC Software has a "straightforward approach that doesn't require a lot of IT resources."