A rash of revenue warnings from enterprise software makers has the long-awaited technology-spending recovery sputtering - a situation that keeps bargaining power squarely in the hands of corporate IT buyers.

BMC, FileNet, PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems and Veritas Software were among vendors reporting last week they would not meet analysts' expectations for the quarter ended June 30. The week before, Informatica, Sybase  and webMethods warned of their disappointing financials.

Nearly all blamed unfinished deals for the shortfalls.

Management  software maker BMC said quarterly revenue would be between $318 million and $328 million, below its prior forecast of $345 million to $355 million, because of "delays in customer purchasing decisions among larger accounts."

CRM  leader Siebel similarly blamed "unexpected delays in purchasing decisions" for its disappointing results and warned that revenue would be about $301 million, which is $52 million short of analysts' expectations. Siebel's license revenue - projected now at $95 million - will be at its lowest since March 1999, Merrill Lynch notes.

WebMethods, which missed its own expectations by 20%, also attributed its revenue shortfall to a large number of deals, including one for $5 million, that didn't close by the quarter's end. Instead of $51 million to $56 million, webMethods now expects to bring in $40 million to $41 million.

A different story

Only PeopleSoft added a twist: It tried to lay blame for a $25 million to $35 million revenue shortfall on Oracle's  hostile takeover bid and damaging publicity surrounding the anti-trust trial, which was "impossible to completely overcome," said Craig Conway, PeopleSoft's president and CEO, in a statement. "We believe the adverse impact to our business has been substantial, with even greater impact this past month."

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But analysts say prolonged sales cycles are more likely to blame for PeopleSoft's woes.

In CIO surveys Merrill Lynch conducted, respondents gave no indication that Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft and its anti-trust trial had any effect on purchasing products from PeopleSoft, says Karen Russillo, a vice president at Merrill Lynch.

For PeopleSoft and its peers, the biggest reason for poor sales is pricing pressure, Russillo says. "Pricing pressure is killing these companies. That's really the primary culprit."