Fastest Growers On The VARBusiness 500

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Success for VARs often means hitching their wagons to the right vendors. Regan describes his company as "a traditional Sun Microsystems infrastructure VAR," and Regan Technologies' fortunes have risen as sales of Sun's advanced UltraSparc T1 servers have grown. Lilien likewise credits some of his company's growth to its exclusive focus on Hewlett-Packard products.

While some solution providers have relationships with lots of manufacturers--FusionStorm sells products from some 50 suppliers--many VARs prefer to keep their vendor lists short.

But much of the fastest-growing solution providers' success amounts to their people, a factor that may determine who makes next year's list. A big reason for Lilien Systems' growth in 2006 was the sales reps hired in 2005, say execs at the VAR. Other solution providers cited the quality of their tech staff: Sjobakken says GTRI has 10 engineers with Cisco's highest certification. "We always pride ourselves on hiring the best and the brightest," he says.

And therein lies a problem: Every VAR executive interviewed for this story said hiring good people is the biggest challenge they currently face.

"People with hands-on field experience are the hardest to find, Regan says. "Our revenue growth is limited by the number of people we can get." With all the hurdles these solution providers surmounted in 2006 to make the list of fastest-growing VARs, making the best hires in 2007 might be the determining factor in who makes next year's list.

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