MSPmentor

Led by Blackboard Inc., Salesforce.com and several other strong showings, the SaaS 20 Stock Index climbed 3.64% for the week ended July 18. The index’s one-week performance slightly beat the Dow (+3.57%) and easily outpaced the Nasdaq (+1.95%).

The SaaS 20 Stock index tracks 20 companies across the software as a service industry. For the week, index winners easily beat losers, 16-to-4. Blackboard (BBBB, +17.32% on the week), which makes SaaS software for higher education, rallied higher after the company made upbeat statements to investors. Other big weekly winners included Salesforce.com (CRM, +11.79%), Omniture (OMTR, +9.01%), Dell Inc. (DELL, +8.61%) and NetSuite (N, +5.69%).

The index’s biggest weekly losers were Google (GOOG, -9.83), which announced strong but not spectacular quarterly results; and Constant Contact (CTCT, -9.13%).