The top technology vendors for 2008--as rated by customers--feature IBM, HP, Amazon Web Services, Apple and Research in Motion. Vendors that were panned include Sprint Nextel, SunGard, SAP and CA among others.
Those are the takeaways from VendorRate, a Web-based service that tallies quantitative as well as qualitative ratings from customers. VendorRate's year-end report was based on polls of more than 3,000 IT professionals. The company then cooks up a composite score based on various factors (communication, timeliness, usability, customer service, reliability, budget and expertise) from polls it conducts on its Web site, tradeshows and conferences.
Here's a look at the top 10 customer satisfaction ratings on a scale of 100 from VendorRate (click to enlarge charts):
And the lowest rated vendors:
Among other odds and ends:
And here's the breakdown of vendor ratings by large enterprises: