ARC 2010: Best, Worst Vendors For Services

From worst to best -- here are the vendors VARs rate poor to near-perfect in Services Opportunities, from our 2010 Annual Report Card. See which list your vendors are on.

The notebook category had three of the worst Services Opportunity marks in the survey -- just as the category had three of the lowest marks in the ROI criteria. In fact, Toshiba's 50.9 this year was quite a fall from last year's 62.25.

Again in the Notebooks category, comes Dell's 50.8 -- beating out Toshiba for the fourth place spot by just one-tenth of a point. Dell's score was even more lacking than in 2009, when it earned a 55.2. That score earned it the distinction of fifth worst in this criterion.

Samsung comes in third for Services Opportunity, with a 50.4 in the criterion. The vendor came in last place in the Display Technologies product category. Last year, in a two-man race against ViewSonic, Samsung came in first place.

The second-to-worst showing in Services Opportunity was from Oracle, in Volume Mainstream Business Servers ($24,999 and below). Its 48.2 was 13 points lower than the average for that criterion within that category. Oracle was not in this 2009 product category.

Fujitsu's 45.9 came in as the worst score in the survey for Services opportunity. Last year, the vendor earned a lackluster 52.9 -- third lowest in Services in the entire ARC. The lowest scores for this criterion within the Notebook category were also lower than the average for Services Opportunity -- 52.2 -- in the product category. Last year, ViewSonic held this dubious distinction.

Network Security Appliances vendor SonicWALL repeated its fifth-place rank in the Services Opportunity criterion. Its 86.2 was two points higher than its score in 2009, and well above the criterion average in the product category of 78.1.

VMWare, in the Server Virtualization Software category with a 86.4 , comes in fourth place. The score is well above the criterion average in that product category, and is higher than the vendor's own 2009 score.

Coming in at number 3 is Fortinet, with a score of 87.9. Last year, the Network Security Appliance vendor came in second place overall for Services Opportunities, with a lower score (85.6) than in this ARC.

At 88.0, NetApp came in first runner up in the Services Opportunities criterion in Data Services Protection. NetApp was not in the ARC in this category in 2009. The average for this criterion in this product category was 84.8.

The 92.2 mark EMC earned in the Data Protection Software category earned top honors for Services Opportunity. Last year, EMC also took the top spot in the criterion, but in a different product category: Network Storage.

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