Survey: Vendor Brands Count, But So Do VARs' Opinions

The survey of more than 600 midmarket and enterprise IT decision makers reflects the marketing power, channel depth and breath of products of the market leading vendors. Eighty percent of the companies surveyed say it's important for their solution providers to have relationships with market leaders, such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard or Cisco. "We'd trust them, so normally we'll want to go with market-leading vendors," says Chris Rapp, the IT director of Sovereign Bank of Dallas (no relation to Sovereign Bank of Pennsylvania). Of the strongest IT brands, Microsoft commands an overwhelming lead over all others. Despite delays in the development and shipment of Windows Vista, a never-ending string of security problems with its software and charges of antitrust practices, end users continue to gravitate to the world's largest software company.

A distant second, Cisco is the only networking company among the top 10 brands, capturing the loyalty of 49 percent of respondents. The company is best known for its routing and switching gear, but its brand strength is serving it well as it continues to develop security, software and unified voice/data communications offerings.

Despite its recent technical and market stumbles, Dell posts a strong third place showing in the Market Insight Report, capturing the allegiance of 46 percent of survey participants. The world's largest computer maker's low-price desktops and notebooks most likely explain its slightly higher showing among midmarket customers.

Nipping at Dell's heels is HP, which has the fidelity of 44 percent of survey respondents and a strong following among enterprise customers. While HP is No. 2 in the computing market, its brand strength is a reflection of its market-leading offerings in printing, storage and servers.

Rounding out the top 10 are IBM (39 percent), Oracle (23.5 percent), Symantec (19.5 percent), Sun (18.5 percent), Intel (15 percent) and, in a tie for the tenth spot, McAfee and Novell (13 percent each).

After the top 10, the brand preference of second-tier vendors drops off significantly. Well-known names including Xerox, SAP, AMD, Toshiba, Apple and Lexmark posted single-digit brand importance rankings. And some very well known brands, such as CA, ViewSonic, Trend Micro, Red Hat, Nortel and Gateway, failed to break the top 20.

Not making the top 10 isn't entirely bad news for vendors and their partners. The Market Insight Report found that 34 percent would buy and 57 percent would consider purchasing an alternative to a market-leading brand if their solution provider recommended it. Midmarket customers are more apt to considering alternatives.

"I trust my resellers. They've been pretty good with the quality of suggestions," says Caterina Luppi, senior director of technical services at the National Parks Conservation Association in Washington, D.C. "It's in their best interest to promote what's best for the customer."

Read more articles based on findings from the VARBusiness Market Insight Report.