The 25 Biggest Tech Companies On The Fortune 500
The 25 Biggest IT Vendors
Each year Fortune ranks the 500 largest U.S. corporations according to revenue and the 2013 list is out. While Wal-Mart ($469.2 billion) and several major oil companies dominated the top of the list, IT companies were well represented throughout.
While the rankings themselves are important, it's even more interesting to see which IT companies moved up the roster and which slipped -– either because their sales declined or they just couldn't maintain healthy growth rates.
Here's a look at the 25 largest IT companies in this year's Fortune 500. And, we didn't even have to go as far as halfway through the list to find them.
25. Western Digital
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 222
Revenue: $12.5 billion
Top Executive: President and CEO Stephen Milligan
Irvine, Calif.-based Western Digital moved up from No. 276 last year. In January the hard disk manufacturer beefed up its SMB storage business and channel efforts by acquiring Arkela Software, a developer of data protection software and appliances for small and midsize businesses.
24. Texas Instruments
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 218
Revenue: $12.8 billion
Top Executive: President and CEO Richard Templeton
Dallas-based Texas Instruments dropped from No. 200 last year. In November, the manufacturer of semiconductors and related software and tools announced a broad restructuring plan that focuses on its embedded technologies and winds down its mobile chip business.
23. eBay
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 196
Revenue: $14.1 billion
Top Executive: CEO John Donahoe
San Jose, Calif.-based eBay moved up from No. 228 last year. The online auctioneer may be best known to solution providers as the company where Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman used to work.
22. Computer Sciences Corp.
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 176
Revenue: $15.9 billion
Top Executive: President and CEO John Michael Lawrie
Falls Church, Va.-based Computer Sciences, often just called "CSC," fell from No. 162 last year. The information technology services company was No. 4 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list in 2012. Last month, the company signed a deal with Hewlett-Packard to join HP's managed security services program.
21. CenturyLink
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 150
Revenue: $18.4 billion
Top Executive: President and CEO Glen Post
Monroe, La.-based CenturyLink greatly improved its ranking from No. 171 last year. But, the Internet service provider found itself in the news earlier this month when as many as 1 million CenturyLink customers in 22 states found themselves without broadband service for several hours in an outage the Internet service provider blamed on a problem with its core routers.
20. Arrow Electronics
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 141
Revenue: $20.4 billion
Top Executive: President and CEO Michael Long
Englewood, Colo.-based Arrow Electronics is the smallest of four distributors on our list and dropped in ranking from No. 133 last year. The company is in the process of developing a product end-of-life program for disposing of old electronic gear, a move that will help partners expand the range of services they can offer their customers.
19. EMC
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 133
Revenue: $21.7 billion
Top Executive: CEO Joseph Tucci
Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC moved up in the rankings from No. 139 last year. The data storage equipment maker recently wrapped up its EMC World conference and related partner conference summit where it unveiled plans to overhaul its partner program to make it simpler and more profitable for partners.
18. Xerox
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 131
Revenue: $22.4 billion
Top Executive: CEO Ursula Burns
Norwalk, Conn.-based Xerox dipped a bit from its No. 127 ranking on last year's list. Always a channel favorite, Xerox was tops in the workgroup color printers category in this year's CRN Channel Champs partners survey. The company has been a leader in helping its channel partners move into the recurring revenue arena through its managed print services program.
17. Emerson Electric
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 123
Revenue: $24.5 billion
Top Executive: CEO David Farr
St. Louis-based Emerson Electric dropped slightly from its No. 120 ranking in 2012. The company includes the Huntsville, Ala.-based Emerson Network Power and its networking, power management and peripherals products.
16. Tech Data
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 119
Revenue: $25.4 billion
Top Executive: CEO Robert Dutkowsky
Clearwater, Fla.-based Tech Data's ranking dropped from No. 109 last year. Tech Data has ramped up its efforts in mobility and cloud computing in recent years through its TDMobility and TDCloud programs. In fiscal 2013 ended Jan. 31, the distributor sold $2 billion worth of tablet computers, twice the volume of the year before.
15. Avnet
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 117
Revenue: $25.7 billion
Top Executive: CEO Richard Hamada
Like fellow distributors Tech Data and Arrow Electronics, Avnet's ranking dropped this year from No. 108 in 2012. And its prospects for moving up anytime soon don't look great. Last month the Phoenix-based distributor said it would cut expenses by $40 million after fiscal third-quarter net income plummeted 41 percent.
14. Oracle
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 80
Revenue: $37.1 billion
Top Executive: CEO Larry Ellison
Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle inched up in its rankings from No. 82 last year. Though one of the industry's leading software vendors, the company has struggled a bit recently as it works to convince customers to buy its complete "Engineered Systems" that combine hardware and software in complete turnkey packages.
Still, the company remains the database software market leader and is a major player in most every other software category, from middleware to applications.
13. Ingram Micro
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 76
Revenue: $37.8 billion
Top Executive: President and CEO Alain Monie
Santa Ana, Calif.-based Ingram Micro moved up five spots from No. 81 last year, the only distributor on our list to do so. The company has moved aggressively to become a "master cloud aggregator" and help solution providers build cloud computing services through multiple initiatives such as its "Seeding the Cloud" program. In April, it rolled out a professional services platform for North American partners.
12. Cisco Systems
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 60
Revenue: $46.1 billion
Top Executive: CEO John Chambers
San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco, which raised its ranking this year from No. 64 in 2012, remains a leading vendor in networking technology and arguably one of the most important IT companies when it comes to the channel. With its Unified Computing System and participation in the VCE initiative with EMC and VMware, Cisco's influence is increasingly going beyond networking gear into other areas of computing.
11. Google
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 55
Revenue: $52.2 billion
Top Executive: CEO Larry Page
With its outsized influence in the IT industry, it may come as a surprise that Mountain View, Calif.-based Google doesn't even crack the top 50 of U.S. companies. But with this year's ranking representing a significant gain from No. 73 in 2012, it's a good bet that won't be the case next year.
What could stop the Google juggernaut? Consumers and government regulators remain concerned about the company's increasingly powerful position, possibly bringing on the kind of anti-regulatory scrutiny that Microsoft attracted in the 1990s, and AT&T and IBM in the 1970s and 1980s. Or, it could lose its way by focusing on such projects as Google Glasses and self-driving cars.
10. Intel
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 54
Revenue: $53.3 billion
Top Executive: CEO Brian Krzanich (as of May 16)
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel actually saw its ranking decline three spots from No. 51 last year. The job of moving the chip manufacturer back up in the rankings now falls to Brian Krzanich, the company's chief operating officer who was tapped earlier this month to take over as CEO from the retiring Paul Otellini.
Krzanich has been with Intel since 1982, serving in a variety of both technical and management roles, including vice president and general manager of manufacturing and supply chain. He has deep experience with Intel's manufacturing business and is credited with driving an overhaul of the chip maker's factory processes and supply chain in 2006. The question is, does he have the vision to lead Intel to maintain its dominant spot in the semiconductor industry?
9. Dell
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 51
Revenue: $56.9 billion
Top Executive: CEO Michael Dell
Round Rock, Texas-based Dell dropped from its No. 44 ranking last year. And if Michael Dell and a group of private equity firms and financing companies get their way, Dell will drop off the Fortune 500 list altogether.
Dell and the investors are trying to engineer a $24.4-billion buyout of the company that will take the company private. As the Fortune 500 rankings include only publicly traded companies, Dell would no longer be eligible. But the buyout effort keeps running into roadblocks, including opposition from Carl Icahn, a Dell investor, who argues the buyout price is too low.
8. Amazon
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 49
Revenue: $61.1 billion
Top Executive: CEO Jeff Bezos
Just an Internet bookseller when founded 19 years ago, Seattle, Wash.-based Amazon.com is now the 800-pound gorilla of online retailers. This year it cracked the top 50 of the largest U.S. companies as it moved up from No. 56 in 2012.
Amazon has become more than just a major applier of the Internet and cloud technology. It's become an influential player there as well with its Amazon Web Services division that provides cloud services for businesses and consumers.
7. Comcast
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 46
Revenue: $62.6 billion
Top Executive: CEO Brian Roberts
Philadelphia-based Comcast moved up from No. 49 in 2012 as it expanded its high-speed Internet service offerings and gained 1.2 million Internet customers.
Comcast was this year's CRN Channel Champ in network connectivity services. Comcast is seen as a leader in VAR/telecom convergence through its Comcast Business Class Partner Program that helps solution providers offer business connectivity services to their customers.
6. Microsoft
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 35
Revenue: $73.7 billion
Top Executive: CEO Steve Ballmer
The way everyone has been beating up on Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft lately, you'd think the biggest software company on the Fortune 500 was going out of business. Instead it managed to move up two spots from No. 37 last year. But there's no arguing Microsoft is at a critical point in its history. In the 1990s, it was arguably the most powerful IT company, period. But, it's fallen behind the times. The company's Windows operating system and Office applications remain cash cows, but their relevance is diminished by the megatrends of cloud computing and mobile computing where the company is not so dominant -- if not an outright laggard.
Can the company re-invent itself as a services and device company as CEO Steve Ballmer envisions? Or will "No. 35" mark the company's Fortune 500 high-water mark?
5. IBM
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 20
Revenue: $104.5 billion
Top Executive: President and CEO Virginia Rometty
Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM slipped one spot from last year's No. 19, and there's a growing sense that the company's momentum may have stalled. While it's still an innovator -- who else could have developed the Watson supercomputer that competed on Jeopardy? -- it's had little or no revenue growth in recent quarters and its server and storage hardware sales have been declining.
Even before hitting its recent rough patch IBM appeared to be moving toward becoming more of a software and services company. It has promised to make changes to its struggling Power Systems, System x and storage product operations, and, as CRN has reported, talks are ongoing to sell the System x business to Lenovo.
4. Verizon Communications
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 16
Revenue: $115.8 billion
Top Executive: CEO Lowell McAdam
New York-based Verizon also slipped one spot this year from No. 15 in 2012. The telecom company continued to expand its mobile broadband network while offering a range of Internet and cloud services through channel partners.
Earlier this year the company sought to simplify its channel strategy by bringing six partner programs under one umbrella with five solution tracks -- networks, mobility, advanced communications, cloud/applications and machine-to-machine -- in which partners can specialize and become certified.
3. Hewlett-Packard
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 15
Revenue: $120.4 billion
Top Executive: CEO Margaret Whitman
It's been a tough few years for the grande dame of Silicon Valley, and this year the company fell five spots on the Fortune 500 list from No. 10 in 2012. Aside from the company's management turmoil and questionable acquisitions like its $11.1 billion purchase of British software maker Autonomy in 2011, the company's core server, PC and printer businesses are under stress.
To their credit, HP executives understand that its channel partners are one of its strengths and an asset it can use to turn itself around. That loyalty -- on both sides -- was in evidenced at the company's Global Partner Conference in February. The company is also overhauling its PartnerOne channel program and aggressively recruiting new partners.
2. AT&T
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 11
Revenue: $127.4 billion
Top Executive: CEO Randall Stephenson
Dallas-based AT&T held steady at No. 11 where the telecommunications giant was ranked in 2012. The company remains a force in mobile telephony and broadband cable services.
The AT&T name almost disappeared in 2005 when SBC Communications (previously Southwestern Bell Corp.) acquired it and briefly considered dropping the AT&T name and familiar logo.
1. Apple
Fortune 500 Rank: No. 6
Revenue: $156.5 billion
Top Executive: CEO Tim Cook
It's hard to believe that as recently as the late 1990s many people didn't think Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple would survive. But with ground-breaking products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad devices, the company has remade the consumer electronics market and brought major change to the business IT arena.
And, this year's Fortune 500 ranking is a significant gain of 11 spots from last year's No. 17. But can Apple maintain its momentum? More than a year-and-a-half since the death of leading light Steve Jobs, observers are questioning whether the company can remain the innovative force it's been for the last decade. Briefly the world's largest company by market capitalization last year, the company's stock has steadily fallen since hitting a high of more $700 a share in September.