The Oracle and Red Hat earnings reports this week give credence to forecasts that enterprise software sales will drive IT market growth this year. They also set up expectations for a strong earnings season, which will begin in earnest in a few weeks.

In late afternoon trading Friday the tech-heavy Nasdaq was up by 8.88 points to 2745.18, the S&P 500 was up by 5.21 points to 1314.87 and the Dow was up 56.16 points to 12,226.72. All were heading for their third straight day of gains after a tumultuous few weeks.

Oracle, considered a bellwether for enterprise software, , an indication that the rosy software scenario painted by market researchers may indeed come to pass.

Unlike PC market growth, which is expected to slow down after a strong recovery from the Great Recession, corporate software sales are expected to increase in 2011 and keep rising next year. Gartner puts global enterprise software sales growth for 2011 at 7.5 percent, rising to $253.7 billion dollars. That compares with 6.1 percent growth in 2010.

Reporting Thursday after the market closed, Oracle, which now sells hardware in the wake of its , said profit rose 78 percent year-over-year to US$2.1 billion. Revenue for the quarter jumped 37 percent to $8.8 billion.