Midsize CIOs List 10 Hot Vendors

Solution providers are always trying to get inside the minds of their customers. At Everything Channel's Midsize Enterprise Summit in Miami this week, we did it for them. We asked the CIOs of 10 midsize companies which vendors impressed them at the show. There were some predictable choices, such as Hewlett-Packard, but there also were some vendors that VARs may not know as well.

Hot Vendor: KACE Networks

Product To Check Out: KBOX Systems management appliance

"It looks like it will streamline my maintenance of my IT department, my one-man IT department for 170 users."

Hot Vendor: Hewlett-Packard

Product To Check Out: ProLiant G6 server

"They [ProLiant G6s] are new servers. It looks like there are some efficiencies to be gained in the data center. We're looking to green up the data center. We use HP now and I wasn't even aware that they were coming out with [the G6] until this conference."

Hot Vendor: CommVault

Product To Check Out: Simpana 8 software suite

"I like their approach to backup and security. It's a great solution. I was just looking for their booth."

Hot Vendor: IPR International

Product To Check Out: Assured Recovery Services

"What's great about them is they do disaster recovery, data center backup. That's a customized solution. A lot of data center hosted providers don't do that. [IPR] will tailor your solution to what you need."

Hot Vendor: Matrix 42

Product To Check Out: Empirium systems and server management suite

"It's a cool product. It has a lot of functionality and it can save a lot of resources for your IT department. It's a pretty intuitive console, setup looks easy and it's somewhat reasonably priced."

Hot Vendor: Information Builders

Product To Check Out: WebFocus business intelligence applications

"It's flexible and has a very dynamic type of reporting that allows you to drill down to subpieces of data to find what you want. Our people using this tool will find it very user friendly."

Hot Vendor: Google

Product To Check Out: Google Apps

"Google seems to have come a long way, especially in the last year. Originally, I was looking for an opportunity with them, but I think this year I can bring some users over to try out [Google Apps], especially the combination of e-mail and collaboration [tools] to certain departments."

Hot Vendor: MicroStrategy

Product To Check Out: MicroStrategy 9 business intelligence applications

"It's a reporting suite that's a free product, if you will, because they'll let you try it before you buy it. Their reports, the dashboard and the graphics are what I need for my organization. I called my guys back at the office and told them to go the Web site and check it out."

Hot Vendor: QlikTech International

Product To Check Out: QlikView business intelligence applications

"It's very slick. I like the ability to drill down quickly, to get users' information and reports very quickly."

Hot Vendor: Tango/04 Computing Group

Product To Check Out: Visual Message Center systems management software

"They had a lot of good-looking products from the standpoint of applications where we have pain points that are on the network."