The tier-one enterprise solutions providers are fighting to remain top dogs in a market characterized by increasing change and incursions by niche players, according to a recent study.

Published by market research firm The Meta Group Inc., Stamford, Conn., the study contains further evidence that smaller enterprise solutions providers specializing in specific market segments are mounting a credible challenge to the top-tier providers in areas such as help desk, network services, E-commerce and supply chain management.

"Ten years ago, EDS could do things that nobody else in the world could do," said Dean Davison, Meta Group program director and author of the study. "Today, there is nothing that EDS or IBM [Global Services] can do that some other competitor cannot also do."

In the help-desk outsourcing area, for example, none of the top-tier full-scale outsourcers, EDS, IBM Global Services and MCI Systemhouse [recently bought by EDS Corp.], received higher ranking than "good" from the CIOs and IT organization members who contributed to the study.

In contrast, Alternative Resources Corp., a help-desk specialist, received "excellent" marks in the categories of quality of execution, consulting capability and breadth of coverage.

IT organization members could rank providers at five levels, ranging from "none" to "poor," "fair," "good" and "excellent."

In the category META called traditional resellers, Entex fared better than competitors Vanstar, Inacom and CompuCom. Entex received "good" marks in quality of execution, consulting capability and pricing and contract flexibility.

The business models of the top-tier solutions providers are fundamentally sound, Davison said, but they had better stop relying on the old stand-by, consultative selling, and adjust to the new competitive landscape.

"Companies like CompuCom and Inacom and MicroAge are moving up the services food chain," said Davison.