Top 10 Tech Leaders

Sage Research and NetworkWorld did a survey earlier this month of the top 10 technology companies. They survey rated the companies against the following categories:

• Executive Management Leadership
• Leadership Qualities
• Customer Service
• Key Technology Industry Leader
• Product Excellence
• Strategic Supplier
• Sales Experience
• Technology Vision Leadership
• Whether respondents were likely to buy from the vendors within a year
  

The top 10 companies in each of these categories can be found here as a slide show.

Survey participants were gathered from a combination of NetworkWorld subscribers who are also decision makers within their respective organisations and Sage Research's Technology Panel members. The top 10 overall companies pretty much rated in the top 10 for each category. Overall standouts were:

• IBM
• Cisco
• Apple

From a vendor's perspective however, I'd be MOST interested in the "whether respondents were likely to buy from the vendors within a year" category. Sure, it's nice that people think a vendor is great at customer service, has good technology and has strong executive leadership - but are they going to buy anything anytime soon?! With this in mind the following things jumped out at me:

• Cisco rated highly everywhere and rated highly on the "likely to buy" list.
  
• Microsoft doesn't rate in the top 5 anywhere except for being 2nd on the "strategic supplier" list and 1st in the "likely to buy" list!
• IBM rates top 3 almost everywhere EXCEPT on the "likely to buy" list. It is 5th here.
  
• Apple rates similarly to IBM and Cisco, BUT is NOT in the top 10 on the "likely to buy" list.
  

So am I to conclude the following:

• Cisco is doing just fine.
  
• Microsoft have ruled our desktops for so long that our laziness and aversion to change have made us accept that even though we don't like them, at least we know that to shut down we have to click the "start" button and if anything stops working, just reboot.
• Are IBM too expensive for our tastes? Otherwise I don't know why it's not in the top 3 of the "likely to buy" list.
• Apple have GREAT marketing and design departments and their stuff is VERY cool...but would you use a frigging MacOS? How are we supposed to play games?!
  

Read the full article for yourself here.