Don Fornes

The United States is at a critical juncture where individual career choices impact our ability to compete in the global economy. Many young capitalists pursue wealth creation, and we applaud their success, with only a secondary consideration of what path they take to achieve prosperity. But this is changing, and for good reason.

Last week, Salesforce.com reported first quarter earnings for its 2011 fiscal year. That last report of the season allowed us to pull together this roundup of financial results for ten publically traded cloud apps companies. These ten are “pure plays” that give us a clear picture into the health of the cloud app business model.

In the ERP industry, the haves include old-money titans Oracle and SAP, who both put up solid fourth quarter earnings. The “middle class,” meanwhile, presented a mixed bag of results as mid-cap players produced fairly tepid growth, and in one case, a decline in revenue. Finally, NetSuite represents the nueveau riche.

Electronic health record (EHR) software vendors aren’t churning out profits like you might expect. You’d think that the Federal subsidies for EHR implementation would create a rising tide that lifted all boats in the EHR software industry. In reality, some vendors are about to capsize. Based on data points I’ve observed in the market over the past few months, I think vendors are facing a cash flow crunch.

At Software Advice, we’re hiring like mad, or at least trying to. I want to share some of the screens I use to whittle down 150 applications to twelve interviews. I’m not talking about the usual hiring criteria; yes, we absolutely look at experience, achievements, academic credentials, etc. That’s all core and critical.