You give your staff a year-end review, so why not your vendors? Once more, we've given you a head start by asking 1,050 IT executives whether their top vendors are delivering the value and reliability they expect. And this year we're adding six vendors in a new category, telecom, as well as four other new vendors.

There's good news to report: IT executives are happier with their vendors this year. Twenty vendors received higher scores, including most of the networking, storage and enterprise application vendors. In fact, five companies cracked our top-ten list for the first time this year, including our overall winner, Linux vendor Red Hat.

Then there's the bad news: 12 vendors saw their ratings drop, by as many as eight points. Consulting and outsourcing firms continue to lag behind most other vendors. And what about those telecom vendors? It turns out that many IT executives believe they offer mediocre value and reliability. And ten vendors would be gladly ditched by more than a quarter of their customers.

While the gainers outnumbered the losers, there's still plenty of room for improvement: No company was considered good or excellent overall by more than 81 percent of their customers, and the loyalty numbers clearly demonstrate how many CIOs feel locked into their vendors. Vendors need to do more for their customers, and customers need to demand more.

To download the survey results, click here.

To view our research methodology, click here.