In tough times, IT buyers typically play safe and buy from the best brands. Marketing analyst group Brand Finance has been poring over the figures, attempting to establish the best brands in IT. Here are the top 10 software/IT sector brands – excluding hardware.

10. Norton
While security vendor Symantec has become a big player in the software market through a number of acquisitions, its Norton brand is still the jewel in its crown. Brand value: $3.3bn (£2.3bn).

9. Xbox
Despite all the problems Microsoft has gone through with the actual hardware, Xbox appears to be the world's most popular games console. Modern real-time online games are a far cry from the non-networked, block-graphic efforts of 25 years ago. Brand value: $3.9bn

8. eBay
The online marketplace is still the world's most popular auction site, but was sidetracked by its purchase of popular software telephony vendor Skype. One failed integration project later, eBay is looking to IPO Skype off, but may wait until global markets take a turn for the better. Brand value: $4.0bn

7. Yahoo
Still hanging in there, despite turning down a near $45bn offer from Microsoft nearly 14 months ago, although recent online rumours are indicating some kind of broader deal on an advertising partnership. Brand value: $4.7bn.

6. SAP
The only non-US brand making it into the top 10, the German software maker has become synonymous with enterprise applications – although competition from the likes of Oracle and software as a service vendor Salesforce.com remains intense. Brand value: $6.1bn.

5. Amazon.com
Seattle-based online retailer is still the 800lb gorilla in the business. But today Amazon is more than simply a bookseller – its Elastic Cloud Compute and Simple Storage Service has seen it become a cloud computing trailblazer. Brand value: $7.5bn.

4. Cisco
Cisco, not content with dominating the network market, recently announced it is to develop its own blade servers, giving enterprise buyers the potential to buy an end-to-end Cisco platform. Brand value: $10.8bn.

3. Oracle
This acquisitive company has built its reputation on its enterprise database software – and extremely competitive nature. Its most recent acquisition, the proposed $7.4bn deal for Sun Microsystems, sees it scoop up Java, Solaris and MySQL. Founder and chief executive Larry Ellison described the acquisition of Java as the company's most significant software deal yet – quite some claim for a company that has been voraciously sucking up rivals in the past few years. Brand value: $11.8bn.

2. Google
When a company's name has become a verb, it is a fair bet the brand is well established. Google's dominance of internet search, and its ability to sell advertising against that, has seen it become one of the world's most valuable brands. One possible cloud on the horizon has been the global collapse in advertising spending. Nevertheless, Google remains a formidable operation. Brand value: $29.3bn.

1. Microsoft
No surprise here, even though the Redmond-based software titan has suffered a rare hiccup with the poor reaction to its Windows Vista operating system – which is probably why Microsoft is moving heaven and earth to get Windows 7 released, to provide a supported alternative to Vista. Latest news is that the Windows 7 release candidate will be available in May. Brand value: $30.1bn.