Best Tech Stocks To Invest In 2014

The past two days have been the best example of how volatility works for the stock market. Yesterday, stocks roared higher out of the gate but eventually gave back a substantial portion of those gains. Today, the opposite happened, with big losses slowing getting trimmed over the course of the day. In the end, the Dow Jones Industrials (DJINDICES: ^DJI  ) finished down 107 points today, but the next change between last Friday's close and current levels amounts to just three-tenths of a Dow point. When you look at the market in that light, it's easier to dismiss the issues of the day and focus instead on the truly long-term implications of market moves.

Another thing many investors miss is the fact that even on a down day, some sectors inevitably do well. Today, tech was in the positive spotlight, and two tech stocks in particular did a good job of holding up well despite the overall dour mood in the Dow. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) soared 2.4% and set a new 52-week high on continued optimism about the company's turnaround. Today's announcement from HP about new software allowing businesses to create more user-friendly apps for mobile devices likely wasn't responsible for the stock's move, but it does represent the direction in which HP is seeking faster growth to replace what it's losing from declining PC sales.

Best Tech Stocks To Invest In 2014: Accelrys Inc.(ACCL)

Accelrys, Inc. develops and commercializes scientific business intelligence software and solutions in the United States, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The company offers Pipeline Pilot, Accelrys enterprise R&D platform, which allows users to aggregate, integrate, and mine structured and unstructured scientific data, such as chemical structures, biological sequences, and complex digital images; and filters, normalizes, and performs statistical analysis on the scientific data and provides visual reports to scientists and scientific managers. It also provides computer aided design modeling and simulation software that allows scientists to perform computations of chemical, biological, and materials properties to simulate, visualize, and analyze chemical and biological systems, as well as communicate the results to other scientists; and data management and informatics software to capture, store, manage, and mine scientific data information. In addition, the company offers Enter prise Lab Notebook, which provides a digital environment to plan, execute, record, store, back-up, and share daily research activities; lab execution systems; and content databases to support research activities through a collection of factual databases and reference works. Further, it provides software wrappers that allows customers to run their own algorithms on the company?s R&D platform; enterprise-wide informatics systems, which integrate customers? internal systems with software from various vendors; contract research services; onsite training and implementation, Web-based training, and data migration services; and support services. The company serves pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agricultural, energy, chemicals, aerospace, consumer packaged goods, and industrial product industries, as well as government and academic entities through direct sales force, telesales, and distributors. Accelrys, Inc. was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Alex Planes]

  What: Shares of Accelrys (NASDAQ: ACCL  ) are down by over 20% today after the company took a big, ugly swing and a miss on its first-quarter earnings and upcoming guidance.

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Calling all cash flows
  When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Accelrys (Nasdaq: ACCL  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

Best Tech Stocks To Invest In 2014: Exar Corporation(EXAR)

Exar Corporation, a fabless semiconductor company, engages in the design, sub-contract manufacture, and sale of silicon, software, and subsystem solutions for industrial, telecom, networking, and storage applications. Its product portfolio includes power management and interface components, communications products, storage optimization solutions, network security, and applied service processors. The company?s products has applications in portable electronic devices, set top boxes, digital video recorders, telecommunication systems, servers, enterprise storage systems, and industrial automation equipment. Exar Corporation sells its products to distributors and original equipment manufacturers or their contract manufacturers worldwide. It markets its products through independent sales representatives, distributors, direct sales organization, and catalog distributors. The company was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Fremont, California.

Top Financial Stocks To Own Right Now: EMC Corporation(EMC)

EMC Corporation develops, delivers, and supports the information and virtual infrastructure technologies and solutions. The company offers enterprise storage systems and software, which are deployed in storage area networks (SAN), networked attached storage (NAS), unified storage combining NAS and SAN, object storage, and/or direct attached storage environments, as well as provides backup and recovery, and disaster recovery and archiving solutions. It also offers information security solutions in various areas, such as enterprise governance, risk and compliance, data loss prevention, security information management, continuous network monitoring, fraud protection, identity assurance and access control, and encryption and key management. In addition, the company provides information intelligence software, solutions, and services, including EMC Captiva for intelligent enterprise capture; EMC Document Sciences for customer communications management; EMC Kazeon for e-discovery ; EMC Documentum xCP for building business solutions and an action engine for big data; and the EMC Documentum platform for managing and delivering enterprise information. Further, it offers virtual and cloud infrastructure products, such as virtualization and virtualization-based cloud infrastructure solutions that address a range of IT problems, as well as facilitate access to cloud computing capacity, business continuity, software lifecycle management, and corporate end-user computing device management In addition, the company provides consulting, technology deployment, managed, customer support, and training and certification services. EMC Corporation markets its products through direct sales and through multiple distribution channels in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. The company was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Brian Pacampara]

  Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, data-storage specialist EMC (NYSE: EMC  ) has earned a coveted five-star ranking.

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) is seeing a strong reaction to its corporate earnings report. Its third quarter sales were broadly in-line with analyst expectations, but earnings managed to beat the consensus analyst estimates. The VMware report always tends to have a reflection on EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) as EMC is the super-majority shareholder here.

Best Tech Stocks To Invest In 2014: I.D. Systems Inc.(IDSY)

I.D. Systems, Inc. develops, markets, and sells wireless solutions for managing and securing enterprise assets, including industrial vehicles, such as forklifts, airport ground support equipment, rental vehicles, and transportation assets primarily in North America. The company offers integrated wireless solutions that enable customers to control, monitor, track, and analyze their enterprise assets. Its campus-based fleet management products include On-Asset Hardware, which provides an autonomous means of asset control and monitoring; Wireless Asset Managers that link mobile assets being monitored with customer?s computer network or to a remotely hosted server; Server Software, which manages data communications between the system?s database and either the Wireless Asset Managers or On-Asset Hardware; and Client Software, which restricts access and limits corruption of system information, as well as minimizes network bandwidth usage. The company?s remote asset management products comprise On-Asset Hardware, which addresses various remote asset types, such as dry van trailers, refrigerated trailers, domestic containers, and railcars, as well as customer-specific requirements; and VeriWise Intelligence Portal, a hosted Website that provides Internet access to client asset information. The company also offers direct feed of the data to customer through XML or Web services. In addition, it provides maintenance, customer support, and consulting services. I.D. Systems markets and sells its wireless solutions to a range of customers in the commercial and government sectors operating in various markets, such as automotive manufacturing, retailers, shippers, freight transportation companies, heavy industry, retail and wholesale distribution, aerospace and defense, homeland security, and vehicle rental directly, as well as through indirect sales channels, such as industrial equipment dealers. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Wo odcliff Lake, New Jersey.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Udovich]

  Yesterday, small cap identity protection stock Lifelock Inc (NYSE: LOCK) surged 15.64% after reporting better-than-expected third quarter earnings thanks in part to playing on the security fears of consumers, meaning its probably time to take a look at it along with two other security stocks, I.D. Systems, Inc (NASDAQ: IDSY) and View Systems Inc (OTCBB: VSYM), which can also play up the fear factor:�

Best Tech Stocks To Invest In 2014: Vertical Computer Systems Inc (VCSY)

Vertical Computer Systems, Inc. (Vertical), incorporated in March 1992, is a provider of Internet core technologies, application software, and software services through its distribution network with operations or sales in the United States, Canada and Brazil. The Company�� primary Internet core technologies include SiteFlash, Emily XML Enabler Agent, Emily XML Broker, which can be an alternative to Web services, and the Emily XML Scripting Language, which can be used to build Web services. The Company�� business operations are grouped into the units, including NOW Solutions, Taladin, OptVision Research, Vertical Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (VHS), Priority Time Systems, Inc. (Priority Time), SnAPPnet, Inc., Government Internet Systems Inc. (GIS), Vertical Internet Solutions, Inc. (VIS), EnFacet, Inc. (EnFacet), Globalfare.com, Inc. (Globalfare), Pointmail.com, Inc. (Pointmail), and minority and other limited interests, joint ventures, and partnerships.

Vertical�� application software, emPath, which is designed to handle payroll and human resources challenges, is marketed by NOW Solutions, Inc. (NOW Solutions). NOW Solutions, sells emPath in the United States and Canadian markets both as a software solution, as well as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, also known as cloud-based (cloud-based) offering. As of December 31, 2011, the Company marketed a number of software products, including the HRMS emPath 6.5 (emPath) by its subsidiary, NOW Solutions; a physician credentialing solution known as SnAPPnet, and a time and attendance software known as PTS by its subsidiary Priority Time Systems, Inc. (Priority Time).

Application Software

The Company�� primary application software is emPath, a human resources/payroll software, which is developed, marketed and maintained by its wholly owned subsidiary, NOW Solutions. This software is Web-based and is offered as a cloud-based offering or as a software license. Vertical markets its SnAPPnet application directl! y to hospitals and to NOW Solutions��customer base, as well as through VHS to physicians in the United States.

Internet Core Technologies

Internet core technologies provide the software foundation to support Internet-based platforms for the delivery of individual software products that can be sold independently or combined with other software products for deployment of all software products throughout its distribution system. Its primary core Internet technology is SiteFlash. The SiteFlash technology utilizes XML and publishes content on the Web, enabling the user to build and operate Websites with the ability to separate form, function, and content. SiteFlash uses a component-based structure to separate, parse, and store the various components of Web pages, permitting these components to be named, organized, filed and eventually redeployed onto the Web pages of a Website. Once all of the components of a Web page are converted into objects, they can be grouped, as required by the user, into the three main types of Web page components: content, form and function. In this way, each element of a Website created using SiteFlash is interchangeable with any other similar element, and these elements may be grouped together in almost any combination to create complex Websites. SiteFlash architectural concepts enable integration with existing technological components within many organizations. SiteFlash�� additional key features are its affiliation/syndication capability, its multi-lingual capability and its multi-modal framework (enabling use on any output device, including wireless devices, such as smart phones, as well as cellular phones and other devices with Internet capability).

The Company offers SiteFlash as a stand-alone product and also as a technology platform for products targeted at specific vertical markets. The SiteFlash technology focuses on content management, e-commerce, and workflow and has led to the development of three additional software applicat! ion produ! cts: ResponseFlash, NewsFlash and AffiliateFlash. It has converted its SiteFlash product to offer it in a cloud-based configuration. The second core Internet technology it has developed is the Emily XML scripting language, a Markup Language Executive (MLE), which is Java compatible. The primary component of the Emily Framework is the Emily XML scripting language, a programming language that runs on Windows, Linux and several UNIX platforms. The Emily Framework is used to create Web-based applications that communicate via XML and HTTP. The third core Internet technology, the Company has developed is the combination of three components: the Emily XML Broker, the Emily XML Agent and the Emily XML Portal. The fourth core Internet technology is a Web server software that was licensed to the Company.

Software Services

The Company in addition to its emPath offering, provides a delivery model, software-as-a-service or cloud-based. Cloud-based is a software application delivery model, where a software company both develops and operates/hosts the application for use by its customers over the Internet. Other NOW Solutions software services include maintenance, custom maintenance, professional services and managed services offerings.

NOW Solutions, Inc.

NOW Solutions specializes in integrated human resources and payroll solutions. NOW Solutions has clients in the United States and Canada ranging from private businesses to government agencies. NOW Solutions markets emPath, which handles human resources and payroll situations where the clients may have employees from different unions, multiple locations in different states (the United States) and provinces (Canada). NOW Solutions has converted some of its existing customers to its cloud-based model.

Taladin, Inc.

Taladin is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. In November 2005, Taladin and NOW Solutions entered into a license agreement whereby Taladin received the rights to emPath for! use by t! he United States federal, state and local governments and agencies in exchange for a license fee and royalties. Taladin has developed a module for emPath to meet payroll guidelines for law enforcement and fire departments but the finalization of the module was put on hold while final testing was performed and the underlying emPath cloud-based platform was finalized, coupled with emPath�� integration with PTS.

OptVision Research, Inc.

OptVision Research is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company and was created to support the development of its fiber optic patent through either direct investment or Government grants. During the year ended December 31, 2011, OptVision Research had not generated any revenue.

Vertical Healthcare Solutions, Inc.

VHS is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. During the year ended December 31, 2010, VCSY licensed its products and technology to VHS for the physician market.

Priority Time Systems, Inc.

As of December 31, 2011, Priority Time developed PTS, a time and attendance product. The Company offers this prodcuts both as a standalone product and as an integrated product with emPath.

SnAPPnet, Inc.

SnAPPnet, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. On May 21, 2010, SnAPPnet, Inc. purchased Pelican Applications, LLC (Pelican). The assets acquired included a software application product known as SnAPPnet, which is used for physician credentialing, as well as Pelican�� customer base.

Government Internet Systems, Inc.

The Company�� 84.5%-owned subsidiary, GIS, was formerly named Emily Solutions, Inc. Vertical licensed ResponseFlash to GIS, in order to market and distribute this technology to government entities (excluding state universities and schools) in the United States.

Vertical Internet Solutions, Inc.

VIS is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. As of December 31, 2011, VIS was inactive.

EnF! acet, Inc.

EnFacet is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. As of December 31, 2011, EnFacet was inactive.

Globalfare.com

Globalfare is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. As of December 31, 2011, Globalfare was inactive.

Pointmail.com, Inc.

Pointmail is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. As of December 31, 2011, Pointmail was inactive.

The Company competes with Oracle, Lawson, Cyborg /Hewitt, Kronos, DLGL, Ultimate, SAP, ADP, Ceridian, Ultimate Software, Quicken, Kronos, NOVAtime Technology, Asure Software, Insperity, Qqest Software Systems, Heathline Systems, Win/Staff, Medkinetics, Intellisoft Group, Inc., Sy.Med and CACTUS Software.