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Shares of both Ariba (ARBA) and Omniture (OMTR) are down sharply this morning after RBC Capital’s Robert Breza cut his rating on the stocks to Sector Perform from Outperform.

The downgrades were part of a larger call on enterprise software stocks. Breza asserted this morning that “industry checks continue to show further deterioration in overall enterprise spending as uncertainty into 2009 and beyond weights heavily on many executives’ minds.” Breza writes that “while December has traditionally been a back-end loaded, budget-flush quarter, demand through New Year’s will likely be influenced

Vocus (VOCS) shares are down sharply today after Piper Jaffray’s Mark Murphy cut his rating on the provider of public-relations management software to Neutral from Buy.

The moves comes after the company late yesterday posted Q3 revenue of $20 million and non-GAAP EPS of 20 cents a share, ahead of the consensus of $19.7 million and 19 cents. For Q4, the company sees revenue of $20.5 million to $20.7 million, with non-GAAP profits of 20-21 cents a share. That compares with Street estimates of 20.88 million and 20 cents.

Still, Murphy has concerns: in particular, he thinks the stock is vulnerabl

Time to draw a line in the sand?

J.P. Morgan software analyst John DiFucci this morning did what every good software analyst has been doing in the last few days, and chopped his estimates for most of the companies in his coverage universe. The reductions reflect both the impact of the rising dollar, which tends to hurt results for the companies in the sector, and the softening macro backdrop. But DiFucci also did something else: he asserted that the time has come to buy the stocks, noting that “everything’s cheap.” He says most of the stocks he follows are trading below the net present valu

Wachovia’s Philip Rueppel this morning was the latest analyst to take a machete to his EPS estimates for the software sector, reducing numbers for most of the companies he follows.

“We are reducing estimats for a majority of companies in our universe, as we believe typical Q4 budget-flush will be muted this year, and growth prospects for new licenses next year will be muted,” he writes.

As part of his call, Rueppel downgrades his ratings on VMware (VMW), Blackbaud (BLKB) and Deltek (PROJ) to Market Perform from Outperform, asserting that those three companies “have particularly acute issues

The software analysts at Pacific Crest this morning slashed their estimates for almost all of the companies they cover, citing signs of slowing demand.

“Based on our recent checks, a modest amount of spending is slipping out of the third quarter and deal sizes are being compressed across the software sector,” analysts Brendan Barnicle, Nabi Elsheshai and Rob D. Owens wrote in a lengthy report on the sector this morning. “The uncertain economic backdrop and the recent financial crises create a difficult scenario domestically. In addition, the quarter-to-date appreciate of the dollar versus t