VARBusiness 500 Companies Pace the Industry

Who are the VARBusiness 500 companies? The June 14 issue will feature our annual ranking of the biggest VARs, integrators, consultants and IT services providers in North America. The VARBusiness 500 is the industry-leading ranking of your competitors, business partners and potential merger or acquisition candidates. Inside the dedicated edition of the magazine you will find the 500 finalists ranked by VAR revenue, along with an alphabetical listing and various breakouts of the top VARs, vendors and technologies. The online companion to the issue will include exclusive components, such as a searchable database of the new VARBusiness 500 and for previous years.

You won't want to miss the terrific editorial package wrapped around the research, itself a work in progress that never ends. VARBusiness editors have contributed profiles of prominent executives in the reseller channel, plus provocative features that explore the bellwether changes redefining the industry--among them, the surging influence of the Web on the way VARs and end users do business. The VARBusiness 500 enterprises are the agents of these changes, but they are responding to upheaval in the economic and technological landscape.

So, who are the 500? Above all, they are big, dynamic and growing. Collectively, the VARBusiness 500 generated $191 billion of qualifying revenue in 1998, up a massive 24 percent from $155 billion the year before. By way of comparison, consider that cumulative sales of the 500 exceeded those of General Motors, No. 1 on the Fortune 500, by a margin of $30 billion.

The very big among our elite group of VARs are putting on weight at a hefty clip: Sales of the top 10 tipped the scale at $95 billion, compared with $78 billion in 1997, and accounted for nearly one-half the overall total. Moreover, membership of our Billion-Dollar Club of companies reporting revenue into nine figures climbed to 34 in 1998 from 26. The smallest got bigger as well. Bringing up the rear on the current ranking is a software VAR with an e-business focus that posted $17.7 million in revenue during 1998, up 28 percent from $13.8 million for the 500th company on last year's VARBusiness 500.

Growth remains a pervasive characteristic of the industry. In 1998, the Fast 50, which pits companies of all sizes against each other, was paced by a Web integrator making its first appearance in the VARBusiness 500. This nimble upstart was founded in 1994 and grew by nearly 750 percent between 1997 and 1998 to $21 million. Fourteen of the 50 showed growth of at least 200 percent last year, compared with five in 1997. In addition, the median company on the Fast 50 grew by 155 percent, outpacing its 1997 counterpart by more than one-third.

The VARBusiness 500 is your year-round resource on the companies that are leading the charge in the indirect sales channel. For complete details, pore over the June 14 issue and come back to www.varbusiness.com.