2000 Power Issue: The 10 most powerful companies in networking, 12/25/00

By Network World Staff
Network World, 12/25/00
Some lord over market segments, others just barely cling to their power. Here's a look at this year's picks.

Identifying power is not as easy as looking at revenue and market share. Indeed those are big factors, but we asked the Network World staff, analysts, enterprise users and other industry watchers who vote on the 10 most powerful companies in networking to consider wider criteria. These include participation in standards bodies, customer service, support and leadership.

This year, EMC, Oracle and SBC Communications (in a tight race against Verizon) made it onto the list, favored for their respective pushes into enterprise storage, e-business applications and business services. Gone are Dell, Compaq, Intel and the beleaguered Novell. Powerful they may still be, but the stage lights have moved elsewhere.

Perennial favorites AT&T, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Sun and WorldCom ranked high again. This, despite major hurdles for many in 2001.

Infrastructure:

INFRASTRUCTURE VENDORS
The players:	Cisco, EMC, IBM, Nortel Networks, Sun
The goods:	Routers, servers, switches and storage systems for enterprise and carrier networks.
*Combined revenue:**	$125.1 billion
Combined market cap (as of Dec. 14):	$911.8 billion
*Fiscal year 2000 or latest nine-month results.

Enterprise applications:

	ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS VENDORS
The players:	Microsoft and Oracle
The goods:	Enterprise resource planning and server application software.
*Combined revenue:**	$33.1 billion
Combined market cap (as of Dec. 14):	$477.6 billion
*Fiscal year 2000 results.

The service providers:

SERVICE PROVIDERS
The players:	AT&T, SBC Communications, WorldCom
The goods:	Voice and data services.
*Combined revenue:**	$117.8 billion
Combined market cap (as of Dec. 14):	$315.6 billion
*Latest nine-month results.