How The Survey Was Done

CIO Insight's 2010 Vendor Value survey measures how U.S.-based organizations generally perceive the value of the IT vendors' product and service offerings, and their overall satisfaction with the support these vendors provide.

To create our inital list of IT vendors for the survey, we relied on the Fortune 500 and Global 500 lists, along with Ziff Davis Enterprise Research's ongoing vendor studies in 21 technology categories. Ziff Davis Enterprise Research staff designed and fielded the survey, and tabulated results.

In all, 684 qualified respondents replied and completed the survey between July 30 and August 24, 2010. Of these, 258 were from firms with at least 50 but fewer than 500 employees; 218 from companies with at least 500 but fewer than 5,000 employees; and 208 from enterprises with 5,000 employees or more.

After identifying the vendors with which their enterprise has had a business relationship in the past 12 months, respondents were asked to rate those vendors as "excellent," "good," "fair" or "poor" on seven criteria. The "overall" rating given for each vendor is the average percent of "good" or "excellent" responses for each criterion. As an additional criterion, respondents were asked whether, given a choice, they would continue to use each vendor with which they currently work.