The best way to summarize the market's view of Tribridge emergence in the market came from attendees at Convergence, the Microsoft Dynamics user conference held last month in New Orleans.

One attendee, who had left a rival reselling firm, said he had nothing against his former employer. "But Tribridge is on fire," he said. And that phrase "on fire," was volunteered by another reselling veteran.

At $75 million in annual revenue, the firm will leap up the list of the 2009 VAR 100 through its merger with Rochester, N.Y.-based Navint Consulting, although since the deal occurred in January, the two companies are listed separately on the 2008 list.

"The merger with Navint was so strategic; they shared the same view we did. There was a lot of opportunity to take market share," says Tony DiBenedetto, the CEO of Tribridge.

The Tribridge view stems from the background of its management, its cofounder, DiBenedetto and president Brian Deming both have Big Five consulting backgrounds.

In fact, Tribridge was founded in September 1998 as a consulting business that focused on implementations of high-level products such as SAP and Seybold. But late in 2003, it opted to become a Microsoft CRM reseller.

From that point, growth had come organically as well as from small acquisitions. But in the last two years, growth has accelerated dramatically.

DiBenedetto says the company had 50 percent organic growth in 2008. With the current market conditions, he still expects organic growth of 10 to 15 percent for 2009. He adds, "I would be surprised if we did not pull off an acquisition."

The Big Five background comes into play in Tribridge's approach to the market.

"We do not have a product focus. We have a customer focus," says DiBenedetto.

The foundation also shows up in the company's ability to handle several industry segments.

"People cannot believe we can handle as many industries as we do," says DiBenedetto, who learned that market view when he worked at Arthur Andersen. He notes that Navint's management also had Big Five backgrounds, including Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand.

For 2008, both Navint with $33.8 million in revenue and Tribridge with $31.9 million easily made the VAR 100 list. Combined at $65.7 million, the company would have come in fourth.

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