St. Petersburg, Russia -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/26/2010 -- The leading business channel on the Russian IT market – @ASTERA (http://www.astera.ru) – presents the results of its 6th annual the "Best Distributors" survey.

Being a part of the "Rating of IT Companies" project, the survey was carried out during the period from October 1 to December 31 in 2009. The main idea of the "Best Distributors" survey was to find out the positions of distributor companies on the Russian IT market, according to Russian IT resellers' opinions.

This time during the survey 168 distributor companies were assessed. Traditionally, twenty top companies were included in the "Best Distributors" rating according to the survey's results. The most frequently mentioned companies were also announced.

Last year was a period of change for all participants of Russian IT market and especially for distributor companies. They have come under pressure both from changes of external conditions, coming from foreign vendors and internal troubles connected with grave consequences of economical recession. Existing situation made distributors to change their tactics and take decisive actions for saving their business. In this connection the results of the "Best Distributors 2009" rating, based on resellers' opinions, show in many ways the ability of Russian distributors to reconstruct their business in compliance with needs of new economic situation and keep relations with business partners.

During the year 2009, there was serious restructuring of sales channels in the market. For the first, many vendors reviewed their partner policy with distributors, staking on collaboration with competitive partners with strong financial positions. Distributors in their turn secured themselves from unreliable resellers with rigorous financial discipline. Such measures as shutting off or limiting credit lines and more aggressive look at debt repayments, which were intended to control distributor's risks, also led to changes in sales channels.

Glut of products was a real headache for distributors at the first half of 2009. Watching unsold goods in warehouses they started to reduce the amount and range of new orders which later turned into another problem to resellers. In the second half of the year resellers suffered from shortage of some products. Part of them got the products from other suppliers, but some of them were left without anything.

Mass bargain sales which were typical for the first half of the year showed lack of financial resources and unavailability of borrowed funds in the market. For many distributors the situation was complicated by considerable debts that were left unpaid on time by reseller companies. To make matters worse, when reseller went bankrupt its providers were not able to get in money at all and consequently couldn't satisfy its own credits. All these aroused a great inner tension in distributor business.

It's worthy to note that some vendors tried to help their distributors with credit support and taking part in organization of marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, such measures were performed only by major companies with strong financial resources. Overwhelming majority of distributor companies struggled to survive this recession single-handed and many of them coped with the task rather well. As it is known, bankruptcy of distributor companies hasn't become widespread or mass. Besides business restructuring and rising efficiency of partner policy, key elements of anticrisis strategy realized by distributors included entry to new markets and broadened the portfolio of services.

There are some losses in the top list of the best distributors in comparison with the previous year. During the year it has missed six participants. However, the losses of Russian IT market are heavier. Among the best companies which have kept their status of the best distributor in this time are 3Logic, ELKO, Landata, MERLION, MICS, Mont, OCS, AXOFT, AK-Cent, LANIT Distribution, Lank, Marvel, NetLab, Fun.

Certainly, there are some new names in the rating. For the first time for the history of the project the Top20 includes A1 TIS, Resource-Media, Superwave, AUVIX.

In this year, the title of the Best Distributor, which has been given to twenty companies, obtains the highest value for the six year history of the project. The assessment of companies was conducted during the most difficult economic situation with uncertain future. The market players haven't ever faced with such extreme challenges previously. To be the best is always much more difficult.

More information about the "Best Distributors 2009" on the Russian IT market: http://www.astera.ru/it-rating/bestdistributors/2009/ (available on Russian).

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St. Petersburg, Russia -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/22/2009 -- The leading business channel on the Russian IT market – @ASTERA (http://www.astera.ru) – presents the results of its annual "Best Vendors" survey.

Being a part of the "Rating of IT Companies" project, the survey was carried out during the period from January 27 to April 14 in 2009. The main idea of the "Best Vendors" survey was to find out the positions of vendor companies on the Russian IT market, according to Russian IT distributors and resellers opinions.

Respondents were asked to assess their satisfaction with activity of vendors working on Russian market. Participants of the survey regarded vendors, primarily, as business partners. That is why such factors as company awareness, its market share and technological excellence of products were not the main ones in their assessment. There were more important criteria for the survey participants - level of financial and marketing support provided by vendors, their warranty statements, technical support, price terms, business efficiency and, what's more important, vendors readiness to understand and solve arising problems.

Initial list of candidates comprised 150 companies. However, participants were allowed to mention vendor companies that were not represented in the list originally. Thus the final list of candidates included 226 companies. Traditionally, twenty top companies were selected and included in the "Best Vendors" rating according to the survey's results. The most frequently mentioned companies were also announced. Considering the total number of companies presented in the rating the value of the first twenty places seems to be very significant.

This time Intel managed to return its number one position in the top list of best vendors. Again it showed the results that the company had been achieving several times - from 2004 to 2006.

Noticeable success was achieved by Cisco. From the beginning of the survey the distributors and resellers had been demonstrating a high level of satisfaction with this vendor. Cisco was close to the winner position and just 0.08 points gap with Intel didn't let the company to take the first place. Nevertheless, this time Cisco improved its position in the top list compared to the previous year gaining eight points.

Like a year ago, 3d place was occupied by HP. It's also worth to mention that the American vendor continued to maintain the highest level of interest in the eye of its partners. HP was placed among the most mentioned companies for the second year.

There were also many participants of the survey that highly assessed ASUS and Samsung. Both companies were included in the top five of the "Best Vendors" rating and became the most popular vendors along with HP.

Activity of Microsoft and ZyXEL on the market had made their partners to seriously revise their opinion. As a result, the software vendor gained 12 points while the telecom equipment vendor got 13 points. Such success helped the companies to take 6th and 7th places correspondingly.

Also it's worthy to note changes in positions of Toshiba and Lenovo. The companies for the first time found themselves among the top twenty list at 9th and 11th places correspondingly.

There was only one Russian company that had managed to get into the top list. It was "Kaspersky Lab" on twelve position in the rating.

Apart from mentioned above companies IBM, NEC, Western Digital and Transcend also improved their positions and got into the top list of best vendors. According to the results of 2008 a "registration" in the top list was prolonged by fourteen vendors. Moreover, those nine vendors - Intel, Cisco, HP, ASUS, ZyXEL, Seagate, Kingston, APC and Sony - had managed to appear in the top list of the "Best Vendors" rating for five years in succession.

In whole, the average score in the top twenty list of best vendors was equal to 7.55 while the maximum one - 7.93 points. The average score in the top twenty list of most frequently mentioned companies was equal to 6.51 points. But it should be noted that the level of companies' satisfaction with activity of many vendors wasn't high enough - more than 50 companies received less than 5 points while the last 20 vendors got from 2.5 to 3.5 points.

The "Best Vendors" rating is very useful for IT market participants. It can serve as a compass for resellers and distributors while choosing new suppliers. At the same time, it can make most vendors understand that there is still a lot of work for them if they want to strengthen their positions on the market and earn a good reputation among partners.

More information about the "Best Vendors 2008" survey: http://www.astera.ru/it-rating/bestvendors/2008/ (available on Russian).

Additional information

Rating formation

The initial list of applicants in 2008 included 150 companies. It was based on the results of surveys "Best Vendors 2007", "Rating of IT brands", "Rating of IT companies in Russia in 2007" and also contained the companies that had applied for the participation before the survey starting. The results of the survey were presented in the form of two ratings: "Best Vendors. Top20" and "Most Frequently Mentioned Companies. Top20". The "Best Vendors" rating was based on the average value obtained at the survey conducted among the representatives of Russian IT companies. Each participant could assess the activity of any vendor company within the range from 1 to 10. The number of mentions determined the place of the company in the "Most Frequently Mentioned Companies" rating.

The survey was carried out only within the registered on the @ASTERA channel representatives of IT companies. Thus such factors as anonymity and professional incompetence of the participants were completely excluded. All answers were processed individually. The survey's findings were based on professional opinions and the possibility of invalid data was excluded. So there was no place to overrating or underrating of some companies results by the participants.

Thus, the results of the "Best Vendors" rating were supposed to give a professional assessment of vendors' work by the sales channels while the data of the "Most Frequently Mentioned Companies" rating - display the level of their popularity among the sales channels.

About @ASTERA
The @ASTERA Business Information Channel is the leader in providing business information for professional participants of the Russian market of information technologies and telecommunications.

Daily Channel @ ASTERA provides the latest information about people and business, technologies and companies, events, products and services, prices and deliveries. Monthly http://www.astera.ru is visited by more than 150 000 users.

Since 2003, the channel @ ASTERA conducts a regular work aimed at research of the structure of the Russian IT market. The research results are published in the form of Reports: "Rating of IT companies in Russia", "Best Distributors", "The best vendors", "Rating of IT brands".

website: http://www.astera.ru
e-mail: info@astera.ru

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