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Jeff Carr is strangely optimistic for the CEO of an enterprise software vendor.
In fact, the CEO of Motiva Inc. is convinced the next few months will be the best in the Pleasanton company's sevenyear history. This, at a time when companies such as Oracle Corp., Siebel Systems Inc. and Pleasanton's PeopleSoft Inc. - the ruling class of the business software space - are mired in one of the worst slumps in the industry's history.
Such against-the-grain optimism is not unheard of, especially in the brazen hightech realm. But Carr may have something going for him beyond simple wishful thinking. His company's niche so-called employee incentive management (EIM) software - is one of the software industry's few growing areas, with a market value pegged to hit as much as $2.6 billion during the next four years, according to market research outfit Aberdeen.
But growing markets don't guarantee success by any stretch. And Carr, a former software sales executive whose resume includes a 10-year stint at PeopleSoft, admits he economy's continued slump has made life difficult.
"When I joined late last summer, the marketplace was...