Winners and losers - users' perceptions of tech's big names

Cisco has the most positive image among IT directors out of a list of 10 major global IT vendors - and Siebel has the least positive, according to an exclusive silicon.com survey.

The survey asked 267 UK-based IT directors at the IT Directors' Forum event in May this year for their rankings, based on their overall perception of the names put before them.

The IT directors were asked to score from one to 10, with one being the most positive and 10 being the least positive.

Cisco came out top with an average score of 3.3, with more than half of the IT directors scoring the company either a '1' or a '2'.

Second spot went to Microsoft, with an average score of 3.8, with more than a third of IT directors rating the Redmond giant a '1' or a '2'.

The company with the least positive image out of the 10 big vendors was Siebel, which came bottom with an average score of 8.0, with almost half (49 per cent) of IT directors rating it a '9' or a '10'. (Siebel is now part of Oracle.)

SAP and Sun Microsystems fared little better, both getting average scores of 6.9.

The top 10 IT vendor rankings, by perception, on a scale of one to 10, in the survey are as follows. (Click on each for more details and an individual breakdown of the score).

1. Cisco
2. Microsoft
3. HP
4. Dell
5. IBM
6. Oracle
7. Symantec
8. Sun Microsystems
9. SAP
10. Siebel