What Drives Top VARBusiness 500 Companies To Succeed?

That lesson was never more clear than in 2000 as the VARBusiness 500--and the IT-services industry as a whole--saw an influx of young, hot, pure-play Web-services companies with names like MarchFirst VB45, Proxicom VB166 and Scient VB193 threaten to overthrow the dominance of traditional solution providers. What those young guns lacked in profits they made up for in cool clients, energy and inflated stock prices.

When it came to reaping the benefits of Internet-related work, older, more established companies, it seemed, were relegated to getting the short end of the revenue stick.

"At the time, people might have claimed that we were a little too stodgy and conservative when it came to grabbing dot-com opportunities," says Mark Elliott, general manager of Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Global Services, which has topped the VARBusiness 500 for six years running. "At the time, that didn't feel so good."

Then a funny thing happened. Dot coms crashed and established companies stopped rushing to catch them, sending the market for pure-play e-services into a dizzying spin. Then, the overall economy slowed, bringing IT spending down along with it.

The harsh economic realities put a renewed focus on business fundamentals as corporations took a more critical view of spending, looking for solutions that could deliver real ROI and partners with established track records. Once again, companies with long histories and familiar names like Ciber VB79, CompuCom Systems VB17 and IBM Global Services VB1 were recognized for reliability and proven business operations.

"The good news today is that those [dot coms] were the first ones to fall off the wagon," Elliott says. "Instead, we kept our focus on core business processes and IT-related activities. Those can't go away." That doesn't mean IBM failed to add e-business skills. It does mean the company kept its eye on the ball.

We spoke with CEOs running some of the largest VARBusiness 500 companies to find out their secrets for success. Here's what they had to say.

Part 2: IBM Reigns Supreme
Part 3: Ciber: Always Reinvent Yourself
Part 4: CompuCom Holds the Course