Top 10 2008 CRN Fast Growth 100 Solution Providers
Two-Year Growth Rate: 310.30%
Top Executive: Sudhakar Kesavan, Chairman and CEO
Location: Fairfax, Va.
2007 Net Sales: $727.12 million
ICF International partners with government and commercial clients to deliver consulting services and technology solutions in the energy, climate change, environment, transportation, social programs, health, defense, and emergency management markets. This month, the solution provider was singled out as the leader in climate change consulting services by Verdantix, an independent business research firm focused on climate change, carbon markets, and corporate responsibility.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 320.98%
Top Executive: David Ehrhardt CEO
Location: Herndon, Va.
2007 Net Sales: $35.97 million
Apptix specializes in providing small business e-mail hosting services so they don't have to deal with the hassle or the expense. Founded in 1997, the VAR provides on-demand email, voice and collaboration solutions to more than 192,000 subscribers at more than 18,700 organizations worldwide.
Its on-demand hosted services include Hosted Microsoft Exchange, Hosted VoIP, Hosted Microsoft SharePoint, Mobile Messaging, and Archiving and Compliance, providing small and medium-sized businesses with a reliable, secure and cost-effective alternative to purchasing and managing software applications in-house. IBM, Fujitsu, Bell Canada, SAVVIS and others have selected Apptix to provide on-demand services to their customers. The company recently appointed John Kersse, formerly of Network Solutions, as chief technology officer.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 331.49%
Top Executive: Richard Stark, CEO
Location: Vienna, Va.
2007 Net Sales: $21.37 million
RightStar, which specializes in service-desk management, is looking for possible acquisitions. But for now, the company relies on its strong relationship with BMC Software and a workforce heavily tilted toward the sales and marketing side for its growing success: Of RightStar's 40 employees, eight are business development salespeople, two are internal salespeople and one is a full-time marketing person.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 353.66%
Top Executive: Mike Therialt, Co-founder
Location: Addison, Ill.
2007 Net Sales: $59.93 million
B2B sells more than simply PCs, servers, switches and printers to its base of SMB customers. The company's telephony and technology services unit installs phone systems, upgrades and installs servers and provides network infrastructure services. To get to the next level of success, however, B2B, like many of the other Fast Growth companies, is looking beyond organic growth, and is actively seeking acquisitions.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 360.06%
Top Executive: Paul Burgess, President, CEO and Director
Location: Pennsauken, N.J.
2007 Net Sales: $13.85 million
Lattice's technology services designs, deploys and manages advanced technological solutions at key government agencies and midsize to large enterprises. In addition, the solution provider designs, develops and implements business management applications, geographic information systems, Web services applications and secure geospatial solutions. Consulting services provides its federal clients with network engineering, architectural guidance, database management and functional area analysis.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 368.26%
Top Executive: Dave Gilden, Partner
Location: Tampa Bay, Fla.
2007 Net Sales: $26.69 million
Security is the cornerstone of Acuity Solutions' business. Using it as a foundation, the company has built up its services to include network optimization and high-performance networking, as well as secure remote access. The company saw strong growth in services surrounding compliance and mediation. In addition, Acuity built its business around typically "recession resistant" sectors, such as commercial enterprise, state and local government, and federal government.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 384.02%
Top Executive: Jeff Lunsford, Chairman and CEO
Location: Tempe, Ariz.
2007 Net Sales: $103.11 million
Limelight's founders predicted an enormous need for businesses to deliver video, music and game content with broadcast quality over the Internet. The company began building an infrastructure capable of delivering that content. In today's YouTube era, that prediction has become a reality. Limelight, which has data centers worldwide, counts some of the world's-largest content providers as clients: Disney, Fox, Microsoft and Netflix.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 447.28%
Top Executive: Suki Mudan, President (photo not available)
Location: Newport Beach, Calif.
2007 Net Sales: $11.90 million
This solution provider was founded in 2000, but it took several years to develop its model to the point where revenue took off. Caneum offers application development and business process outsourcing services through a hybrid model of offshore and on-site presences. By relying on offshore resources in India, and engineers that can be on a customer's site, Caneum is positioned to offer the best of both worlds.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 528.71%
Top Executive: Craig Abod
Location: Reston, Va.
2007 Net Sales: $228.97 million
Carahsoft Technology is a government IT solutions provider that melds technological expertise with a thorough understanding of the government procurement process. It aims to provide Federal, state and local government agencies with the best solution at the best possible value. Increasingly, those solutions are becoming more environmentally friendly. The company recently partnered with Verdiem, a developer of power management software for PC networks. The companies will jointly market Verdiem's Surveyor technology to federal agencies, helping them address Executive Order 13423 by cutting required power for their PC networks by as much as 60 percent.
Two-Year Growth Rate: 1,875.74%
Top Executive: Mont Phelps, CEO
Location: Waltham, Mass.
2007 Net Sales: $160 million
NWN looks for strategic acquisitions that fit in with the company's goals. Typical targets would be companies focused on unified communications, information security, data storage and disaster recovery, and enterprise computing. NWN has strategically aligned itself with Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, EMC and Microsoft. The solution provider looks to buy solution providers that are strong partners with at least one of those vendors. NWN then leverages its strength with the other key vendor partners to organically grow its business in the acquired company's accounts.