ARC Methodology

To produce the Annual Report Card issue, VARBusiness begins crafting a comprehensive survey as early as January. That's when the magazine's editors and researchers collect input from reader advisory board members, analysts and vendor industry executives and discuss the size, shape and scope of the ARC study that we publish each October.

VARBusiness' ARC is based on a survey of nearly 5,000 systems integrators, IT consultants, VARs, solution providers and software developers. This year, the survey was conducted by VARBusiness in conjunction with Bernett Research Services, a data-collection company in Boston, with help from Answers Research, a Solana Beach, Calif.-based market research and consulting firm.

Participating vendors were selected based on market-share data provided by industry analysts from Gartner Dataquest, IDC, iSuppli/Stanford Resources and In-Stat/MDR. Participants submitted lists of solution-provider partners to be surveyed. In certain cases, VARBusiness supplemented lists with information culled from its circulation database.

Interviews with business partners were conducted via the Web and telephone from late May through late July. To qualify, VARs had to recommend, resell or support a vendor's product and/or service. VARs rated the importance of 15 criteria in product innovation, support and partnership, and then voiced their levels of satisfaction for each. VARs also expressed their level of loyalty to a given vendor. Scores were weighted by their relative importance, determined by regression analysis, and combined to determine an overall winner.