CARAHSOFT TECHNOLOGY

Carahsoft Technology President Craig Abod has a simple formula for success: Work hard. Stay focused. Invest in the sales and marketing side of the business.

While that credo sounds simple and straightforward, Reston, Va.-based Carahsoft, a solution provider that focuses on federal, state and local governments, used that elixir to achieve a jaw-dropping two-year growth rate of 2,548 percent. "We do a ton of proactive sales and marketing into the government space. Last year, we did over 500 different marketing projects, including about 150 Webcasts and over 100 different on-site events," he said. "When you do as much marketing as we do, hopefully you will sell something." And sell Carahsoft does. Founded in January 2004, the company did $3.6 million its first year, $36 million its second and more than $91 million in 2006. Abod said Carahsoft's approximately 80 employees understand the company's business model and all have expertise in selling to the government market.

Carahsoft is organized into four areas: Department of Defense, federal civilian agencies, the intelligence community, and state and local government. Each group generates about an equal amount of revenue, Abod said, but it's important to have people well-versed in each specific area in order to be successful. "There are different nuances between [the Defense Department] and the intelligence community. And when selling to state governments, you might as well be dealing with 50 different countries."

In addition to having sales teams focused on specific government segments, Abod said he also has sales and marketing teams build around specific vendors and technology.

Another important part of Carahsoft's strategy is that it refrains from going after huge government contracts. Abod said staying hungry is what fuels his company's growth. "We do lots of government orders with lots of government customers. It's not like we have a backlog. We get an order for some stuff, and we ship and deliver it that month. Next month, we better go get some more orders."

Craig Zarley

Next: Heartland Technology Solutions

HEARTLAND TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

Arlin Sorensen, founder and CEO of Heartland Technology Solutions, started his practice from the ground up—literally.

"I was a farmer and got the computer bug, and I was doing my own accounting on Apple Plus computers in 1982. So I just started helping area farmers buy computers and set up their accounting systems," Sorensen said. "I finally decided if I was going to spend my time doing it, I might as well get paid for it."

And that was what led to Heartland Technology Solutions (HTS), founded in 1985 on Sorensen's farm in Harlan, Iowa, where its headquarters still reside today. The company boasts a staff of 80 employees in five Midwestern states.

HTS reported a 2006 revenue of more than $11.5 million, which represents a growth of almost 82 percent over the two years covered by the Fast Growth survey. Sorenson credits the solution provider's recent rash of mergers and acquisitions and their accompanying "quality management team of veteran players" as one of the largest contributors to this growth. This strong managment team, each with different areas of expertise from the various companies they've run, has been key, he said.

Another component of HTS' prosperity lies in its relationships with its vendor partners. Each year, HTS hosts a strategic planning event with its four vendor and one distributor partner—Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, SonicWall, 3Com and Ingram Micro—to lay out a joint marketing and sales strategy for the year. "I'm tired of trying to run campaigns for one vendor, so whenever we run an event, it's multivendor and solution-focused. We get all of them on the same page at the same time."

HTS serves several niche markets, has an aggressive marketing approach toward business and is primarily SMB focused—but it is pushing into the midmarket as it geographically expands, Sorensen said.

Elizabeth Dolski

Next: NWN

NWN

Mont Phelps is careful when describing his recipe for success.

"We are definitely not a rollup," said the president and CEO of NWN, the Waltham, Mass.-based solution provider whose net sales for the years 2004 to 2006 soared more than 2,282 percent in large part due to a series of solution provider acquisitions.

Rather than simply buying companies at random to gain top-line revenue, Phelps looks for strategic acquisitions. NWN focuses on project-based professional services, managed services that involve the ongoing care and feeding of IT networks, and professional IT staffing. Within those areas, Phelps cites "four technical pillars"—unified communications, information security, data storage and disaster recovery, and enterprise computing.

"We also align with Cisco, HP, EMC and Microsoft," he said. "We are looking for companies that are strong in one of our areas of focus and have at least some involvement in others."

Once NWN acquires a solution provider, it then sells products and services built around other vendor relationships or technical expertise. He said companies tend to buy the gamut of products and services NWN offers and the company simply goes deeper into the acquired company's existing accounts. Now that Phelps feels he has the recipe for growth perfected, he sees nothing but upside. "We are a solid organization that grew $100 million last year, and I expect to grow $100 million this year. Once you get the recipe right, all you have to do is add water and stir," he said.

Craig Zarley

Next: Northwest Computer Support

NORTHWEST COMPUTER SUPPORT

After about 25 years of ups and downs, break/fix and warranty repair shop Northwest Computer Support reached a nadir in 2001 when it lost 40 percent of sales and was budgeting for revenue of only $1.8 million that year. Wanting to get out of the business, the owner persuaded the current president and vice president of sales to come back to the company and help him make it a more attractive acquisition target. Now, 24 consecutive quarters of growth later, it's a $9 million-plus business expanding into new practice areas.

To achieve this, Northwest didn't need to replace existing employees, quit any practices or change its name. It just needed to open the purse strings a bit and focus more on the top line.

When CEO James Watson and COO Lesleigh Watson bought the company in 2005, they replaced an owner who had focused too narrowly on cost containment. They have invested in the company's expansion, which helped it continue to grow by 90 percent in the 2004 to 2006 period alone.

Under its new direction, the company hired additional talent, put infrastructure in place to support growth, worked with vendors as early adopters of new technology and launched additional practice areas. The company also is looking at growth through acquisition. The changes "allowed our staff to see that we could be a $10 million company and eventually a $20 million to $50 million company. There is that much opportunity," said Northwest President Tom Rash.

Northwest's willingness to "put skin in the game" by doing testing and early deployments of new products, as well as its ability to fill a room with loyal clients for Microsoft or HP marketing events, earns them a lot of great client referrals from vendors as well.

Jeanette Boyne

Next: Groupware Technology

GROUPWARE TECHNOLOGY

Groupware, which last year was the fastest-growing solution provider in CRN's Fast Growth survey, managed to repeat that feat this year with another spectacular growth in business between 2004 and 2006 of nearly 3,200 percent, just shy of its 3,900 percent growth from 2003 to 2005.

In last year's survey, Groupware was cited for growing revenue in 2005 to $31 million from just $767,000 in 2003, thanks to a rebuilding process it went through after outside investors acquired the ailing solution provider and started mining its customer list for prospective customers, said Groupware President Mike Thompson.

That rebuilding process also led revenue to grow to $59 million in 2006, up from $1.8 million in 2004, he said.

However, revenue growth from 2005 to 2006 was a more stately 90 percent as the solution provider matured. Thompson said he never expected that early growth to go on forever. "I don't see that growth rate happening again," he said.

But even more important, at least for future growth, is Groupware's expanded investment in developing new vendor partners, including Cisco Systems, Oracle and Network Appliance, to complement its platform focus on Sun Microsystems, Thompson said.

"We've had them on our line card but hadn't put a lot of resources behind them," he said. "Now we still lead with Sun but get cross-solution sets. Or we can lead with another vendor and bring Sun in."

For instance, Groupware recently became a Cisco-certified partner with advanced security specialization and unified communications specialization, focusing on VoIP opportunities.

The solution provider also recently became one of Oracle's three All Partner Territory program partners on the West Coast. "Oracle has a sales force dedicated to bringing opportunities only through the channel," Thompson said. "It's Oracle's way to engage with the channel and leverage channel relationships. So we have built out our Oracle services capability."

Groupware also has built up a storage practice based on its relationship with NetApp and became a Platinum partner of the vendor within only six months, Thompson said. The solution provider has also just taken on Hitachi Data Systems as a partner, but that relationship is too new to have generated any revenue yet, he said.

"All the vendor relationships work together," Thompson said. "Depending on the customer, we can talk [about] different vendors. This is opening the door to a lot of cross-sales opportunities."

Joseph F. Kovar

Next: e-Brilliance

E-BRILLIANCE

An increased focus on partnerships helped e-Brilliance move up nine slots on the Fast Growth 100 this year. The Conshohocken, Pa.-based solution provider, which debuted at No. 24 on the list last year, garnered the No. 15 spot this year in large part by leveraging strategic relationships with software partners and burnishing its trusted adviser status with customers, said Mike Axelrod, president of e-Brilliance.

"We've definitely focused on partnerships more than we have in the past," he said.

It's certainly working: Net sales jumped 270 percent over the two-year period covered by the Fast Growth survey, to $5.3 million in 2006.

Founded in 2001, e-Brilliance is a 50-person firm whose goal is to be a full-service consultancy to its customers, mostly financial services firms in the Fortune 1000.

The company is focused 100 percent on services, Axelrod said, and has tight relationships with software partners such as SOA Software, Composite Software and IBM Global Services. A typical engagement will see e-Brilliance's partner get the software sales while the solution provider gets the integration and implementation work, he said.

Clients trust you more if you're willing to turn down work that's out of your area of expertise, said Chairman Anthony Schweiger. "You have to have a willingness to say 'No, that's not what we do,' and make a referral," he said.

As Axelrod puts it: "It just doesn't work trying to be all things to everybody."

J2EE and .Net application development have always been a strong suit of eBrilliance's, Schweiger said, but the firm has forged tighter bonds with its customers by also developing strong chops in business analysis. When e-Brilliance puts together a team for a client, members are selected specifically for that client, Axelrod said, explaining that financial services firms need IT consultants who are conversant with issues like wealth management, tax policies and procedures and accounting methods.

"It's not about getting hooks into the client," Axelrod said. "We're making sure that the people we're bringing to that client really are a great fit."

Timothy Long

Next: Unbounded Solutions

UNBOUNDED SOLUTIONS

In 2000, after a two-year stint in application integration consulting for PricewaterhouseCoopers, then 23-year-old Vik Thadani decided to strike out on his own. With a partner, he founded Unbounded Solutions.

Seven years later, Thadani is president and CEO of a $5 million enterprise content management solution provider and consulting firm, and Unbounded Solutions has earned itself the No. 8 spot on CRN's Fast Growth 2007 list.

In 2006, Unbounded posted revenue nearing $5 million, an increase of almost 400 percent over its 2004 numbers, and Thadani attributes that to finding niche areas rather than trying to become a jack-of-all-trades.

"We've aligned ourselves with a few successful software companies that are selling a lot of software and we provide services," Thadani said. "By aligning ourselves with these software vendors, we're able to build a team that knows how to execute and deliver projects around these technologies."

Unbounded specializes in enterprise content management, particularly in deploying EMC's Documentum software, and in Microsoft SharePoint and Seibel CRM software deployments. The Atlanta-based solution provider also does IBM WebSphere and Tibco application integration projects.

Unbounded is looking into expanding its role to provide IT staffers to customers and plans to expand internationally with offices in Europe and Asia. Youth and flexibility are key selling points, according to Thadani. "We're a very young company; we have a very young workforce," he said. "We have a pretty agile consulting workforce. For each project they relocate to the customers' work site.

"Once we get into a customer site and they get to see the quality of the consultants we are providing, they generally keep on buying services from us. We're able to retain the existing customer base and to move into new areas with them as well," he said.

Jennifer Lawinski

Next: ZSL

ZSL

ZSL Executive Vice President Shiv Kumar credits much of his company's revenue growth over the past two years to synergistic partnerships with other solution providers.

This "Get IT Together" ecosystem of about 16 partners in the U.S. and 50 globally has helped the software integrator extend its reach into verticals including telecommunications, health care, insurance and retail. "We are collaborating and adding value to each other's expertise," Kumar said.

ZSL, founded in 1995, describes its core competency as application development and management, but it also has logged significant experience in developing mobile and wireless computing solutions. Over the past two years, ZSL logged a cumulative growth rate of 129.4 percent, ending 2006 with $78 million in revenue.

Aside from new verticals, partnering with other solution providers has helped ZSL and its partners build their presence in midmarket companies, Kumar said. This, in turn, has exposed it to new application solutions areas. Thus, the company's ongoing investment in its IDEA (Innovative Development of Enterprise Applications) Lab. This R&D investment has brought ZSL closer to certain key vendors, since it is seen as an evangelist among customers and, to some extent, other solution providers."Until 2005 and even part of 2006, we were very conscious of positioning ourselves as a vendor-neutral applications provider," Kumar said. "But now we position ourselves, aligning ourselves with a specific vendor or vendors so that they can help us speed up the education process and co-selling."

Heather Clancy

Next: Incentra Solutions

INCENTRA SOLUTIONS

Incentra Solutions, an IT services and storage management provider, began as an incarnation of its predecessor, ManagedStorage International, and has evolved into a $66 million Fast Growth success.

Along with a name change and being led by Chairman and CEO Thomas Sweeney, the Boulder, Colo.-based solution provider boasts a number of reasons for its growth. But primarily, it's the expansion of Incentra's managed services and product offerings, which encompass the sale, monitoring and managing of a solution, Sweeney said.

"We've been broadening our product and service capabilities, [and] we're getting a greater share of [what] our customers spend than we were in the past," he said.

Concentrating its operations on Chicago and westward, Sweeney said Incentra has implemented newly created packaged assessments that it uses as its go-to-market strategy. These standardized assessments cover a wide variety of storage operations, but also cover service capabilities for the company's expanded line of products and assets that it manages for its customers.

This, Sweeney said, creates a broader service capability that can be replicated on a daily basis in offices all over the world. Case in point: Previously, Incentra offered first-call support for Sun products only. Today, it also offers that same hands-on support for Hewlett-Packard, Symantec and Network Appliance products. Expanding the number of product lines it covers has led to a higher, more advanced level of services, as well as revenue.

In addition to services growth, another big chunk, according to Sweeney, can be attributed to the acquisition spree the MSP has been on over the past few years. "Our product business, organically, has been growing at 33 percent a year—of course [it has] been growing faster than that because of acquisitions. ... That's what really fueled the heavy growth," Sweeney said.

Elizabeth Dolski

Next: iteration2

ITERATION2

For iteration2, success has come from picking the biggest horse and hitching its wagon to it without looking back—a pretty good strategy if your horse is named Microsoft.

Since its start in 2004, iteration2 has made selling Microsoft Dynamics software a multimillion-dollar business, raking in $22 million in 2006, up more than 500 percent since its inception. And next year should be even better. The company expects to bring it at least $30 million in 2007.

"We started the business to become Microsoft's best partner," said Mike Gillis, CEO of the Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider. With partners Gary Peterson and Greg Carter, Gillis came out of retirement to start the company.

"We really saw a vacant hole in the marketplace. We had come from SAP and Oracle backgrounds, and we believed that Microsoft was the only vendor in the world who could integrate all the stack products—all the products we were familiar with—and in the end make it easier, cheaper, less complicated [to deploy them]," he said.

From there, after drawing up a meticulous business plan and setting up shop with a helping hand from Microsoft, all it took was a leap of faith. "It was almost like religion for us. We know what we wanted our lives to be like. We knew what we wanted the value to be that we were able to give to our customers," Gillis said.

The company specializes in Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft stack software deployments, and Gillis said he thinks the software will continue to be more relevant to growing businesses as Vista deployments gain momentum in businesses, in turn driving growth for iteration2.

On the flip side, Gillis said the company's biggest obstacle to growth is its ability to recruit enough qualified employees to maintain its upward trajectory. The company courts potential hires, visiting them at home and wooing them over, sometimes even before they're ready to take the plunge and join the iteration2 team, to make a favorable impression. "We look at recruiting in the same way that a top college sports coach would. Recruiting is the No. 1 thing in our company. We have to recruit the top professionals in our industry in order to have a best-in-class program," Gillis said.

Jennifer Lawinski