Weekly VAR500: IBM GS Revenue Tops, SAIC Gets Military Deal, And More
Editor's note: We've started collecting information for our 2010 VAR500. The VAR500 is a listing of the largest IT solution providers in North America. VARs, resellers and solution providers with revenue of $20 million or greater should are invited to take part in the 2010 VAR500 survey.
IBM Global Services, HP Services Rake In Revenue
IBM Global Services (2009 VAR500 rank: 1) and HP Services (2009 VAR500 rank: 4) continue to be ranked first and second, respectively, in revenue among the IT services providers covered in TBR's 3Q '09 Professional Services Business Quarterly Benchmark report. The report noted that the solution providers benefited from having diversified portfolios of offerings and acquisitions. TBR also noted that the mergers of Dell and Perot Systems as well as Xerox and ACS could change the complexion of the list's top 10 solution providers ranked by revenue.
According to the report: "While we expect the top five companies in the benchmark -- IGS, HP Services, Fujitsu GSB, Accenture and CSC -- to retain their positioning indefinitely, recent acquisition activity has the potential to disrupt the top 10 standings in 2010, elevating the combined Dell-Perot and Xerox-ACS and potentially unseating SAIC and Cisco Services."
The report also noted that business process outsourcing was the only service line to demonstrate growth during the third quarter of 2009. The areas of consulting and systems integration, information technology outsourcing, and applications outsourcing all reported slight declines on an industry-average basis. In addition, pricing pressure continued to affect most IT services providers in the quarter; TBR expects downward pricing pressures to continue into the first half of 2010 in Europe because the region has lagged the U.S. by approximately two quarters throughout the recession.
SAIC Will Provide IT Support For Military Health System
Science Applications International Corp. (2009 VAR500 rank: 14) has been awarded a task order by the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity to provide system performance management services for the Military Health System Tri-Service Infrastructure Management Program Office (TIMPO). The total contract could be worth more than $16 million. Work will be performed primarily in Falls Church, Va., San Diego and San Antonio.
TIMPO delivers and manages the communications and computing infrastructure that supports information technology systems throughout the Military Health System. SAIC will provide system monitoring and management services and engineering support for TIMPO's data transportation and processing infrastructure. SAIC will be responsible for continuous network monitoring, management, engineering, reporting and realtime fault isolation. Other services will include status reporting, event correlation, and network engineering support.
Computing Readiness Tool Helps Schools' Computing Programs
CDW (2009 VAR500 rank: 17) Government has launched its free, One-to-One Readiness Assessment Tool, a value-added online resource that provides K-12 educators with vital information to successfully implement one-to-one laptop computing programs.
CDW-G and Educational Collaborators designed the tool to provide customers with strategic guidance and consultation to help them overcome the challenges of one-to-one programs. The tool assesses the technical and cultural readiness of a school's environment for a one-to-one program, assists schools in identifying critical success factors that teachers and administrators may not have considered and provides specific, next-step recommendations to reduce risk and time-to-launch.
IKON Upgrades Managed Document Services
IKON Office Solutions (2009 VAR500 rank: 96), a part of Ricoh, is expanding its comprehensive managed document services offering. The IKON Managed Document Services program is aligned with Ricoh's Managed Document Services.
Terrie Campbell is the newly appointed vice president of Managed Document Services. The program will offer customers end-to-end fleet management, as well as consulting and business process support service. IKON's strategic approach includes total fleet management, "Intelligent Device Rationalization" (an assessment of current assets, business processes and workflows) and optimized business processes. IKON also provides on-site management of document processes through its managed services team, as well as off-site production and imaging through a network of national document processing centers.
CACI Inks Deal With Riverbed
CACI International (2009 VAR500 rank: 56) will become a vendor and integrator of Riverbed technology, an IT infrastructure company for networks, applications and storage. The strategic alliance will allow CACI to help customers increase productivity with dramatically accelerated WAN operations and improved cost efficiency.
CACI provides professional services and IT solutions within the defense, intelligence, homeland security and federal civilian government arenas.
CACI will integrate Riverbed equipment suites and fully support the installations. The deal provides CACI's customers with WAN acceleration, particularly crucial to those in the defense and intelligence communities. According to the companies, Riverbed's solutions can speed access to applications and data, in some cases by up to 100 times. That capability can be used to enable realtime video for in-theater operations, consolidate data centers and boost bandwidth for personnel in remote areas.
Lockheed Martin Solution Provides Insight Into Smart Grids
Lockheed Martin (2009 VAR500 rank: 9) launched its Smart Energy Enterprise Suite, or SEEsuite, of advanced grid management applications. The product gives utilities, system operators and defense customers insight into their enterprise operations and command and control of their smart grid assets.
John Mengucci, president of Information Systems & Global Services-Defense, said the product is aimed at helping customers not only make the grid smarter, but also more reliable, resilient, secure and flexible.
SEEsuite helps customers dynamically manage load during times of grid stress or volatile market prices, integrate and balance load from distributed energy resources, increase situational awareness for advanced decision-making, and deploy and manage "microgrids," portions of the electric grid able to operate independently of the overall grid.