Well folks, you waited extra long for the follow-up to the 2004 CDN Top 100 Solution Providers list. Turn to page 36 if you can’t wait.
There were a lot of surprises this year for sure. I really believed that it would be next to impossible to knock NexInnovations out of the No. 1 spot, but lo and behold it happened.
Softchoice Corp. of Toronto managed to beat it by more than $200 million in revenue. NexInnovations dropped about $100 million from its previous rank.
I would not, however, count them out for next year. I have met a lot of smart people at NexInnovations and their plans for this year and 2007 are quite ingenious. I would not be surprised if they retake the No. 1 spot.
Don’t forget NexInnovations, prior to this year, won the top spot three years in a row, and in 2004 more than doubled the No. 2 solution provider’s revenue.
But hats off to Softchoice, which has just kept on rolling, nearly doubling its revenue in each of the last three years.
Its fourth quarter revenue alone was up 43 per cent over the same period the year before. Its annual revenue was up 24 per cent year-over-year. Sure the company has done it by acquisition, but it has also been smart. The business has local presence in 34 cities across Canada and the U.S., and has brought out innovative services such as TechCheck.
Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, once said “There is only one place and that is first place.”
But I would like to argue that there is tremendous value at the middle and bottom of CDN’s Top 100 Solution Providers list.
For example, High Vail Systems Inc. of Toronto won the 2004 Newcomer of the year award for making the list with a paltry $1 million in revenue. If you look at them today they are a $5 to $10 million player in this market. In fact, the bottom five all have between $5 to $10 million in revenue. That means the channel is doing something right over the course of the 18 months since we last issued the list.
Evans Research of Toronto, our research partner for the Top 100, found that 2005 was a strong year for the channel. After posting a revenue decline in 2003 of 11 per cent, followed by a virtually flat year in 2004, the industry is finally seeing some growth. Reported revenues are $5.58 billion for the Top 100 companies on this list, up by five per cent from 2004.
The channel in Canada is more than just back. It is healthy.