Who’s On Top

A round of applause, please, for the leading 100 solution-provider executives you're going to read about on the following pages. They're at the top of their games, leading the industry charge in a brutal environment that's become largely about tweaking margins and stealing market share. Impressively, they've managed to maintain, and sometimes increase, their specific market presence by devising innovative solutions and attacking new markets during an economic cycle that's seeing some of their competitors simply throw in the towel.

It's no small feat. IBM Global Services (IGS) VB1 senior vice president and group executive Doug Elix nails the challenge perfectly when he explains, "As the pace of change in today's marketplace quickens and the time to respond gets shorter, maintaining competitive advantage becomes increasingly difficult."

All in all, there are 27 new execs inhabiting the top 100 this year, including Michael H. Jordan's replacement of Richard H. Brown at solution provider EDS VB2. Collectively, these top 100 solution-provider execs lorded over deals worth more than $277 billion last year. So read carefully the advice being doled out on the following 10 pages. Whether it's the highly flexible Lockheed project-management methodology or the aggressive acquisition philosophy at CGI Group VB44, which allowed sales to leap 38 percent despite a weakness in consulting and IT services, the executives in this section deserve to be paid attention to--more for your sake than theirs, if you're itching to unseat them.

Doug Elix

Jeff Heller

Arthur Johnson

Ann Livermore

Joe Forehand

The Top 100 Solution Providers 6-10

The Top 100 Solution Providers 21-40

The Top 100 Solution Providers 41-60

The Top 100 Solution Providers 61-80

The Top 100 Solution Providers 81-100