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2003 Top Ten: Heavy Findings: Page 2 of 5

No. 9: No matter what John Edward says, crossing over is not for everyone.

Results from HR’s market perception surveys show that some big-name vendors are having trouble getting established in new markets. In HR’s Fall 2003 OSS Market Perception Study, survey respondents graded Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) only sixth-best (and tied for sixth-best at that) as a supplier of middleware systems. Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA) is another giant that’s struggling to establish itself not only in OSS but also in storage networking, according to results from HR’s market perception study of the storage networking business.

No. 8: Brand recognition is a big weakness across almost all OSS market sectors – even for established vendors.

The fragmented nature of the OSS business was clearly evident in HR’s market perception survey of 433 service provider and enterprise respondents. For instance, among the 25 suppliers of retail billing systems, only one – ADC Telecommunications Inc. (Nasdaq: ADCT) – was identified by more than half of the respondents to that survey category, and no vendor was able to break the 50 percent recognition mark in the revenue assurance/fraud management systems category.

No. 7: Some big-name vendors no longer are perceived as market leaders by prospective customers.