Solution providers play a critical role in helping businesses and organizations adopt and get the most value from leading-edge technologies – AI and generative AI being the most recent example. This week we present the CRN 2024 Solution Provider 500, the annual ranking of the largest solution providers by revenue with operations in North America.

In March Cognizant launched its Advanced AI Lab in San Francisco, focused on developing core AI research and breakthroughs. The IT service giant followed that up in April with a global partnership with Microsoft to expand the availability of Microsoft’s generative AI and Copilot products to Cognizant clients.

“Typically, AI companies look at industrializing AI and creating use cases, which is part of our mandate,” Cognizant CTO Babak Hodjat, told CRN. “But we’re going beyond that. We’re looking at actually expanding the state of the art in AI itself, coming up with new algorithms and technologies that would be useful for our clients.”

“And in that form, we will be a few years ahead of the game as far as technologies that might actually get to our clients,” Hodjat said. “But it will be groundbreaking and will allow us to be differentiated from an algorithm and technology perspective, not just from a perspective of being able to create the solutions, which we are already pretty good at.”

In early May, meanwhile, IT services provider Virtusa launched Helio, a suite of platforms, accelerators and consulting services designed to help clients effectively leverage generational AI in their digital transformation initiatives.

And IT systems integration and consulting services leader Accenture recorded $300 million in generative AI bookings in just the last six months of the company’s fiscal 2023, which CEO Julie Sweet said “position us at the heart of the beginning of AI-fueled reinvention.”

These are recent examples of how VARs, solution providers, systems integrators and strategic service providers are gaining expertise, developing solutions and expanding their service offerings to take advantage of the exploding opportunities created by the AI wave and help customers understand what AI means for them and the benefits AI solutions can provide.

More broadly, these AI initiatives also demonstrate how solution providers help their clients through seismic shifts in the IT industry and turn leading-edge technology into real business value.

Here we provide the 2024 CRN Solution Provider 500, the annual ranking of the largest solution providers by revenue with operations in North America.

For the fourth consecutive year IT systems integration and consulting services giant Accenture tops the Solution Provider 500. The company reported revenue of $64.1 billion for its fiscal 2023 (ended Aug. 31, 2023).

The 10 largest companies on this year’s Solution Provider 500 are largely the same as the top 10 in 2023 – albeit with several moving up (NTT Data, World Wide Technology) or down (Capgemini, CDW and Cognizant) one or two spots. Leidos moved into the No.10 slot, knocking DXC Technology to No. 11.

The last year has been no less turbulent for the channel than in previous years in terms of mergers and acquisitions. In December Insight Enterprises (No. 17 on this year’s Solution Provider 500) acquired SADA, a leading Google Cloud partner. In February solution provider Ahead (No. 30) said it had acquired Computer Design & Integration (No. 57).

Private equity sees the channel as a good investment. On April 2 private equity firm Clayton Dubilier and Rice acquired Presidio (No. 21) for an undisclosed sum while on May 8 publicly traded Perficient (No. 56) struck a deal to be acquired by private equity firm EQT AB for approximately $3 billion.

And on April 9 the industry was stunned with the news that C1 (No. 40) – previously known as ConvergeOne – had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company cited rising interest rates, its highly leveraged capital structure, and the financial difficulties of a key OEM vendor partner as factors in the filing.

This year’s Solution Provider 500 introduces 41 newcomers including Dexlan (No. 47), GTT (No. 51), Unicom Engineering (No. 119) and ACP CreativIT (No. 120).

The 2024 Solution Provider 500 collectively generated revenue of $501.2 billion in 2023, up 5 percent from the $475.9 billion last year’s Solution Provider 500 class generated in 2022.

In addition to the complete Solution Provider 500 list, CRN.com also provides a closer look at the top 25 companies on this year’s ranking, a slideshow highlighting the Solution Provider 500 newcomers, and a roundup of how the Solution Provider 500 companies are dispersed across the U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

Joseph F. Kovar contributed to this story.