The InformationWeek 500

No it is not the latest car race but it is the annual listing of the top innovative IT organizations. I have taken more of an interest in this year's list than in the past due mostly to the economic issues we are currently facing. I thought it would be fun to go down the list and see where some of the organizations stand as of today.

• The number one company, National Semiconductor, is one that I have competed against in a former life. We tried but failed to benchmark our IT organization against theirs. My former employer is basically out of business and Nat Semi is going strong. Good for them.
• At number 17 is Constellation Energy, the parent company to my old electric utility. They just announced that they had to be bought out by a unit of Berkshire Hathaway due to liquidity issues driven by their energy trading unit. Bad break I guess.
• FedEx beats out every passenger carrier on the list at number 18. Always an innovator, I guess it pays to get the baggage there on time, without fail, and to offer your customers a way of tracking its progress.
• Foundry Networks, at number 31, just got bought out by Brocade.
• Microsoft does not appear on the list until number 95! You would think that they would be able to do better.
• Washington Mutual, this year's number 100 on the list, is on the auction block and waiting for government bailout money to come its way before selling itself to another firm. Perhaps a bit of risk management automation would have helped?
• Nortel Networks is on the ropes as well, perhaps justifying their position at number 225.
• After all those ads about their web services you would have thought that Geico could have done better than 242 on this year's list.

Clearly the general economy plays a huge role in the health of some of this year's top most innovative organizations from an IT perspective. There are a number of surprises on this list and a number of opportunities for improvement in IT's contribution to the success of a number of organizations.