Amazon tops BusinessWeek's InfoTech 100

Dell, SAP, and Motorola failed to make the cut, due to weakness in their business, according to the report. Last year Dell was 15th, SAP was 39th and Motorola was 11th on the list.

How did Amazon end up as number one information technology firm and Dell, SAP and Motorola in the dust heap from a pool of 500 publicly-traded companies? It's all in the methodology.

Companies whose stock price has dropped more than 75%, whose sales shrank, or where other developments raised questions about future performance were eliminated from contention. We also dropped some phone companies whose monopoly or near-monopoly power in their countries gives them an unfair advantage over competitors. The remaining group of companies was ranked on four criteria: return on equity, shareholder return and revenue growth (which were given equal weight), and total revenues (which was weighted). Then the top 100 companies were reranked as a group.

Companies were rewarded in the rankings for getting into new businesses or reinventing existing businesses or markets.