Top Distributors Name Top Vendors

Software giant Microsoft has maintained its hold as the darling of distributors this year, while Intel has knocked Hewlett-Packard out of its No. 2 preferred-vendor spot. That's according to VARBusiness' recently released State of Distribution survey. In a tie for third place is HP and IBM, with a considerable drop in percentage points compared with last year, when all four vendors were almost equally preferred among their distributor partners.

Rounding out the top five vendors is Western Digital, displacing last year's No. 5 vendor, AMD. Western Digital's fourth-quarter earnings, reported on July 1, 2005, brought it a stone's throw from being a billion-dollar company at $940 million.

"We saw a healthy demand in all of our markets in what is typically the slowest quarter of the year for our industry," said chairman and CEO Mark Massengill in a statement.

When the top IT distributors were asked which vendors they considered their fastest-growing, Microsoft, Intel and Western Digital took the top three slots, followed by EMC, HP, IBM and Seagate Technology.