Solution Provider 500: Evolve, Adapt, Thrive

Jennifer Bosavage

June 22, 2012, 05:00 PM EDT

This year, the integrators with the highest revenue in North America are part of CRN's Solution Provider 500 list, formerly known as the VAR500. As it is the most up-to-date and comprehensive ranking of solution providers in the market, its name evolved in order to reflect the change going on in the industry. VARs have extended their reach into integration, solution selling and service providing, becoming increasingly responsible for fulfilling more and more of their customers’ IT requirements.

There are 78 new companies on the 2012 list. Nearly 8 percent of those newcomers were in the top 100. Within that top 100, the largest solution provider made just more than $60 billion in revenue, while No. 100 came in at $180 million. A whopping 65 of the new-to-the-SP500 companies report offering solutions in cloud computing. Nearly 50 (49) sell disaster recovery products and services, while 41, more than half, incorporate unified communications.

In terms of verticals, most solution providers, 73 percent, are active in the financial sector, and nearly the identical number, 72 percent, offer “general services.” A large proportion of the SP500 has customers in the government space (63 percent) and manufacturing segment (62 percent).

Slightly more than 90 percent of these top players provide data center services. Other offerings include security services and solutions (88.8 percent); managed services (88.2 percent); storage services and solutions (86 percent); cloud services and solutions (83.4 percent); virtualization services and solutions (75.0 percent); mobility (73.4 percent).

Finally, 10 companies that were not in the “billion-dollar” club last year managed to crack the code this year. Those solution providers include CompuCom Systems, which saw revenue leap 132 percent to more than $2 billion, and Sirius Computer Systems, where sales grew 50 percent, to more than $1.2 billion.

The 2012 CRN Solution Provider 500 —which, all told, represents nearly $313 billion in sales—is, once again, a testament to the channel's abilities to meet today’s business challenges.