Lighthouse Computer Services

Lighthouse Computer Services is VAR of the Year in Sales Excellence/Demand Generation. The key to Lighthouse's success is leaving no stone unturned. From forward-looking market research, to prospecting deeply within Fortune 500 enterprises, to mining vendors' partner programs for profitable incentives, the 10-year-old IT services and systems consultancy exploits every opportunity.

"Beating the drum about all of the services Lighthouse provides is the theme for 2006," says David Sylvestre, the company's vice president of marketing. The veteran marketing executive hired from Textron last August has brought a systematic, comprehensive marketing program to a company that previously had little.

"Our goal is to be more nimble and make more connections within customers," he says. "We have to make sure that customers understand how Lighthouse has changed, and the new ways we can serve them. It takes repeated pounding of the message."

Lighthouse, founded in 1995 by former IBM executive Tom Mrva, doubled its revenue each year selling IBM hardware and related services to Fortune 500 enterprises in the New York/New Jersey area. Mrva realized in 2003 that sustaining that growth rate would require Lighthouse to move beyond hardware and integration services into consulting.

A market study found huge opportunities in five related practice areas: midrange servers; storage, backup and disaster-recovery services; IT regulatory compliance; networks and security; and Microsoft technologies. And in 2004, the company reorganized along those lines.

"By putting all of these practices together under one roof, we tie together solutions to these interrelated problems," Sylvestre says. "You can't talk about regulatory compliance without addressing storage, for example."

Converting Metropolitan Life's Sun Microsystems infrastructure to an IBM platform is a good example of what Lighthouse does; it is nearing completion of that massive project, valued at "tens of millions of dollars," after six months of intensive effort.

IT regulatory compliance is Lighthouse's fastest-growing practice, Mrva says. "We work closely with legal and accounting people, and implement what they recommend."

Microsoft Partner certification and exceptional IBM credentials have given Lighthouse a superior value-added proposition.