Other companies with a major presence in North Carolina scored well, too. But by far and away the winner is Red Hat. The Ziff Davis CIO Insight Research Study, which was based on a survey of 844 senior level U.S. technology executives, ranked Red Hat as its winner for the second consecutive year.
Some 84.2 percent of those surveyed gave Red Hat an excellent or good rating. Red Hat's score climbed 2.9 percent from a year ago. Apple finished second at 82.6 followed by Cisco (81.4, up 2 points) and Dell (79.0). Cisco, of course, has a major campus in RTP. Dell recently built a PC assembly plant in the Triad. Cisco slipped past Dell into third spot from 2004.
IBM finished 10th at 71.2, climbing three spots from the previous year.
Privately held SAS also made a strong showing, finishing at 67.7, which was good for 13th place. SAS moved up eight spots from 2004. Bell South, meanwhile, ranked 25th and Nortel 32nd out of 41 companies.
The study asked participants to rank their vendors as excellent, good, fair or poor in seven different areas.
A look at the results for Red Hat reveals impressive marks.
Red Hat set a record in the study for "value" with a score of 85 points. The value score was based on the average ratings for increasing revenues and lowering costs as expected, solving the business problems paid to solve, and meeting return on investment expectations.
In terms of loyalty, 97 percent of the 186 respondents about Red Hat said they would continue to do business with the Raleigh firm if they had a choice. That ranked No. 1.
The Hatters ranked first in meeting expectations for lowering costs (86.37 percent) and first in meeting return on investment expectations (84.3 percent). They finished third in meeting expectations for increasing revenues (80 percent) and third in solving the business problems paid to solve (89.6 percent).
There's more.
Red Hat ranked first in meeting commitments on time and budget (84.3 percent), was second in being flexible and responsive (79.1 percent) and third in meeting quality expectations (85.6 percent).
Red Hat also ranked first in two other categories - overall excellent ratings and excellent ratings for value.
Cisco, meanwhile, ranked first in meeting quality expectations (89.7 percent) and second in customer loyalty (95.8 percent).
Cisco also finished first in the Reliability Top Ten with a score of 83.7. That total was based on the average ratings of respondents for meeting commitments on time and budget, being flexible and responsive, and meeting quality expectations.
SAS, despite finishing 13th, scored well in percentage of excellent ratings - fifth overall, seventh in value, and sixth in reliability.
SAS also ranked first in business intelligence, with 85.7 percent of their customers saying they would continue to do business with SAS.
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