We start the new year with no changes to our Providers list and two new faces on our Enablers list, adding enterprise-class managed hosting provider VeriCenter, which acquired most of Sprint's data centers; and hosting automation software provider SWsoft, whose November debut of Plesk 6.5 further enhances SWsoft's position in Web-hosting software development and Web-hosting server administration software.

We removed Sprint from the Top 50 when it announced in June that it would be exiting the managed hosting business. Since then, VeriCenter has been battling competitors for the rights to Sprint's vacated market share. VeriCenter, though smaller in size than most of the other bidders for Sprint's assets, was able to persuade Sprint that its exclusive focus on providing enterprise-class managed service, and the degree to which it had perfected the business model in its Houston datacenter, would enable VeriCenter to provide Sprint customers with superior quality service, according to VeriCenter CEO Gray Hall.

The acquisition quadruples VeriCenter's annual revenue to more than $45 million, and gives the company a significant presence in four new markets. In addition, it increases critical mass in terms of customer accounts, people, facilities, business processes and technology capabilities, making VeriCenter more prepared to compete against national providers like Digex, NaviSite, and Data Return, Hall said.

SWsoft moved to the top of the control panel market in June 2003 with the acquisition of Plesk and Confixx. The November release of Plesk 6.5 took the popular Linux server management tool and added support for Windows 2000 and 2003 servers.

Of course, adding these two newcomers to the list requires the removal of two companies to make room. Virtualization software provider VMware's tenure on the list was short-lived, having only made the list in November 2003. In December, EMC announced plans to acquire VMware to shore up its information lifecycle management strategy.

By contrast, the other company to lose its spot on the list has been there since the list began in April 2001. We chose to remove Computer Associates due to its December sale of the ACCPAC division. In addition, recent executive tumult in the iCanSP division make us question CA's future on the list.

CA's departure leaves us with 15 of the 40 original members of our list, which debuted in April 2001. On the Providers side, the survivors are Corio, NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Surebridge and USi. For Enablers, BMC Software, Citrix, Digex, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Progress Software and Sun have been the mainstays.