On Thursday, the virtualization software firm reported a second-quarter profit of 20 cents a share, topping the 19 cents projected by analysts. And while sales fell to $455.7 million, they still exceeded the $452.4 million the Street had been expecting.

In a conference call with analysts, VMware (VMW) execs warned not to read to much into that though, saying they are still cautious about the economy.

“It is clear the global economy has not yet recovered and there is still some uncertainty,” CEO Paul Maritz cautioned. “In a recent survey of 150 CIOs of large businesses, 40 percent expected some downward revision in their budgets in the second half of 2009. That said, there were some signs that customers were moving on with business, even if it was buying just enough just in time.”

Goldman Sachs published its “Americas: 2009 Software Outlook” report today and it’s as dismal and ugly a forecast as you’d expect, given the current economic climate.

“The worst of the IT-spending slowdown likely remains in front of us, as we start the clock on slashed 2009 budgets,” Goldman said in the report. “We forecast 0 percent revenue growth for our group, below consensus at 5 percent, and 1 percent earnings growth, below Street at 2 percent.”

Beyond that, the firm forsees an eight percent decline in developed economy tech capital investment, with the likes of Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP), Symantec (SYMC), CA (CA)–the so called Big 5–treading water until the economy recovers. Said Goldman, “We expect the Big 5 software companies…to benefit from more defensive revenue streams due to critical nature of functions, ’stickier’ maintenance, stronger negotiating leverage, and a likely spending consolidation to larger vendors. Hence, we assume 0 percent growth for this group in 2009.”

Ugly. Could have been worse, though.

Those remarks promptly shaved 5.46 percent off of Google’s stock, sending its share price down to $311.75, a three-year low.

Of course, Google’s 10-Q, which was filed on Nov. 7, said pretty much the same thing, though it didn’t have quite the same effect on the company’s share price.

As result of the continued disruptions in the global financial markets, worldwide economic conditions and their impact on levels of consumer spending have recently deteriorated in many countries and regions. Any decreases in or delays in advertising spending due to general economic conditions could reduce our revenues or negatively impact our ability to grow our revenues.”