The Top 25 Solution Provider Companies Of The CRN 2023 Solution Provider 500

by Rick Whiting, CRN

The Top 25

Amid the current economic turbulence, including ongoing inflation and rising interest rates, many businesses are closely scrutinizing their IT budgets, trying to strike a balance between keeping their spending in check and maintaining the competitive advantage that the right IT can bring.

The IT industry, meanwhile, is itself undergoing significant upheaval with leading IT vendors laying off hundreds and even thousands of workers and rapidly evolving their technology portfolios and go-to-market strategies.

It's during times like these that solution providers really shine, going beyond providing IT and related technical services to truly fulfilling the role of trusted advisor.

Here we provide the top 25 companies on the 2023 edition of the CRN Solution Provider 500, the annual ranking of the largest solution providers by revenue with operations in North America. The complete Solution Provider 500 list can be found at crn.com.

The 10 largest companies on this year's Solution Provider 500 ranking are the same as in 2022, unlike last year when the addition of infrastructure services giant Kyndryl, spun off from IBM in late 2021, shook up the top 10 (and dropped IBM Global Services from the No. 1 spot it held for many years).

A number of the top 10, however, have moved up or down one or two spots in this year's rankings. Capgemini moved up to No. 3 from No. 5 last year, for example, while Cognizant moved up to No. 6 from No. 7. NTT Data Services has dropped two spots to No. 5 while Kyndryl fell two positions to No. 8. And World Wide Technology and DXC technology swapped places from 2022 with WWT now at No. 9 and DXC No. 10.

For the third consecutive year Accenture is No. 1 on the Solution Provider 500 list. The IT systems integration and consulting services giant reported revenue of $61.6 billion for its fiscal 2022 (ended Aug. 31), up nearly 22 percent from $50.5 billion one year earlier.

Like most solution providers, Accenture today is seeing many opportunities across the changing IT landscape while at the same time facing internal challenges – including a cost-cutting effort and layoffs of 19,000 employees or 2.5 percent of its workforce.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet recently said that demand for large transformation deals remains strong as many businesses' need to build their digital core. "I'm personally working right now with clients across insurance, health care, consumer goods, banking and telecom – all of whom are very focused on how do [they] get rid of [their] technical debt, how do [they] build more resilience. They're trying to build digital products, but they've got really old systems," Sweet said during a March earnings call.

"Technology is so core to every strategy that when the economy goes down, what are you seeing? Well, people are saying, 'We gotta optimize. We gotta lower costs. We gotta do managed services,'" Sweet said.

Accenture's aggressive acquisition strategy remains a significant factor in the company's growth: The systems integrator made about two dozen acquisitions in 2022 – a lot, but still only about half the 50-plus acquisitions it made in 2021.

Some of the other companies making significant gains on this year's Solution Provider 500 list, either through organic growth, acquisitions or a combination of the two, include Converge Technology Solutions (No. 31), CBTS (No. 39), DoIT International (No. 42), ThunderCat Technology (No. 54), Peak Technologies (No. 60), Redapt (No. 67), EVOTEK (No. 71), Verinext (No. 88), Service Express (No. 93) and Mission Cloud (No. 95).

This year's Solution Provider 500 introduces 35 newcomers including EOS IT Solutions of Austin, Texas (No. 75), Cyderes of Toronto (No. 85), San Francisco-based NCC Group (No. 91) and Blackwood of Annapolis, Md.

This year's Solution Provider class collectively generated $475.9 billion in revenue in 2022, up 9 percent from the $436.4 billion generated by last year's Solution Provider 500.

Amongst the top 25:

World Wide Technology is a global IT solutions provider with $17 billion in annual revenue and nearly 9,000 employees in 55 locations. Core to the company's operations is its Advanced Technology Center where WWT helps partners and customers conceptualize, test and validate hardware and software solutions.

This year marks the fifth year of WWT's five-year plan to triple the size of its services organization by the end of 2023, CEO Jim Kavanaugh told CRN in December.

WWT is a leading channel partner for Cisco Systems, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and VMware, among other vendors.