We have an enormous sales pipeline for both applications and technology, ... Typically that's proven to be a good indicator of how we'll do.

209

Solid execution in the field, a strengthening competitive position, and an improving economy contributed to results that were above expectations.

208

We're slowing down our growth in spending in Asia, but we're not going into a retrenchment mode. That would be stupid. We think Asia will come back eventually.

184

Our assumption is that the U.S. economy will continue to improve, at least gradually, but technology spending will not show significant improvement probably for another six months.

182

Nobody knows exactly how this year is going to play out, ... We do know there was a bubble of spending for applications a year or two ago. The bubble kind of burst and for a few quarters the ERP market [has been] kind of soft. It's a tough environment.

180

As far as we can tell, technology spending for enterprise hardware and software remains very soft and does not appear to be improving.

163

Nine months ago, we set out to save one billion dollars annually by using our own Internet e-Business applications, ... That billion dollar savings translates to a 10 point improvement in our margin.

151

A billion dollars in annual savings translates to a 10-point improvement in our margins. We did better than that again this quarter. In the first quarter our operating margin improved over last year's by 11.7 points -- from 17.4 percent to 29.1 percent.

125

Our visibility going forward remains very limited, as has been the case for the last 18 months.

118