VAR500: GTSI Names CEO, CDW Honors Partners

VAR500 Solution Providers Make Waves This Week

VAR500 solution providers are in the news -- expanding business overseas, naming new CEOs, receiving and handing out awards, and discussing how top IT companies made money during a bad economic turn. Accenture, Capgemini, CDW, Fiserv and GTSI were all headline makers last week.

GTSI Names New CEO

Sterling Phillips Jr. will become the new CEO at GTSI. Phillips takes over the role from Scott Friedlander, who left the CEO slot in late October, as part of an agreement with the Small Business Administration to lift the ban placed on GTSI to participate in bidding for Federal contracts. Phillips previously served in management positions at professional services firms, including Analex (now part of QinetiQ-North America); IBM's federal systems (now part of Lockheed Martin) and Computer Sciences.

Capgemini Sccops Up India IT Firm

Capgemini has acquired the India-based IT services company, Thesys Technologies, which provides banking implementation solutions to the global financial services industry. Thesys has more than 300 employees with experience in offering end-to-end Temenos services including implementation, training, testing, upgrades, product customization, support and maintenance for the baking software. It runs a specialized service delivery platform for T24 -- an advanced banking system -- and provides specialized tools supported by Thesys Solutions Centers. Thesys’ service delivery infrastructure will expand the scope of Capgemini’s offerings in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and will strengthen its position in the packaged core banking platform market.

Fiserv Earns Industry Kudos

Fiserv was ranked first in North America and fourth overall in Chartis Research’s RiskTech100 2010, a comprehensive annual study of the top global technology firms active in risk management. The RiskTech100 is judged on six equally weighted categories: functionality, core technology, organizational strength, customer satisfaction, market presence and innovation. Fisesrv was the category winner for organizational strength, which recognizes a company’s leadership, history and business focus.

CDW Honors Partners

CDW has announced the recipients of the company's fourth annual Partner of the Year awards. The Partner of the Year awards honor companies that have provided exemplary products, programs and support to CDW and its customers in the previous 12 months. CDW works with more than 1,000 partners during the course of a year. The 2010 recipients are: Belkin, Blue Coat, HP, Ipswitch and Tech Data.

Accenture Study: High Performance Cultures Succeed During Downturn

While many companies slipped into stagnation mode during the downturn, cutting budgets and focusing primarily on maintenance, a recent study by Accenture found that high-performing organizations viewed IT as a growth engine for their business and the economic conditions as an opportunity to build capability.

’Our survey found that chief information officers (CIOs) of high performance IT organizations are deeply involved in business outcomes and closely attuned to business needs -- current and future -- across the enterprise,’ said Gary Curtis, Accenture’s chief technology strategist who supervised the research. ’They are successfully retiring their legacy systems and embracing newer technologies. They are adept at managing the balance between optimizing costs and ensuring that they have the budget, skills, and resources to help fuel business growth.’