Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments.
iOpener 2011 Sponsors
Aon Hewitt is changing how employers manage their human capital. We are the #1 human capital consulting and outsourcing firm in the world—with the resources, expertise, and global reach to solve your evolving human resource needs.
We deliver the strongest team of professionals in the industry, with 29,000 colleagues in over 90 countries around the world. Our team has access to the widest breadth and depth of research, platforms and services, in more locations and for more industry segments than any other human capital firm.
We serve over half of the Fortune 500, providing distinctive value, top-rated customer service, and measurable business impact. Our proven track record of success and ability to deliver both global and local solutions means you can count on Aon Hewitt to provide the broadest range of integrated and flexible solutions to solve some of your most complex business needs.
Based in Chicago, Apartments.com is a national online apartment guide and relocation resource distinguished by its highly customized searches, superior visual ads and affiliation with more than 1000 partner websites across the country.
Apartments.com is owned by Classified Ventures, LLC, which is also based in Chicago. Classified Ventures is owned by five leading media companies: Belo Corp. (NYSE: BLC), Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB) and The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO). Classified Ventures provides national and locally branded online services for e-commerce opportunities in various classified advertising marketplaces that build upon the capabilities and local expertise of its national affiliate network.
From its beginnings as a wholesale cut flower operation started by George J. Ball in 1905, Ball Horticultural Company has grown into a leader in all facets of floriculture, with distribution capabilities in all of the major world markets.
Since its founding, Ball has introduced many innovative, award-winning varieties to the world of horticulture, including the Wave® Petunia Family, Dazzler® and Super Elfin® Impatiens, and Fiesta™ Double Impatiens. The company also offers the Simply Beautiful® and Circle of Life™ programs exclusively for independent garden centers.
Ball is committed to sustainable practices and has highlighted its green accomplishments in its “Sustainability Report.” Focused exclusively on the ornamental business that first made its reputation, Ball's global family of breeders, seed and vegetative producers, distribution companies, and research and development teams has a strong presence in over 20 countries on six continents.
Business Runs on IT. IT Runs on BMC Software.
Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. That’s why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud environments. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. For the four fiscal quarters ended September 30, 2010, BMC revenue was approximately $1.96 billion.
CA Inc. is an IT management software and solutions company with expertise across all IT environments – from mainframe and distributed, to virtual and cloud. CA, Inc. manages and secures IT environments and enables customers to deliver more flexible IT services. CA Inc.'s innovative products and services provide the insight and control essential for IT organizations to power business agility. The majority of the Global Fortune 500 relies on CA, Inc. to manage evolving IT ecosystems.
At Capax Global, our stated objective is to leave every client organization stronger than we found it. We employ over 700 of the world’s best technologists, people who have deep knowledge of the industries that we serve, including financial services, accounting and auditing, pharmaceutical and media industries. We specialize in providing end-to-end solution delivery of whatever you need to make your IT successful, including solution engagements that support everything from shrink-wrap product deployment to custom application development, application hosting and technical staffing solutions.
Visited by more than 10 million car shoppers each month, Cars.com is the leading destination for online car shoppers, offering credible and easy-to-understand information from consumers and experts to help buyers formulate opinions on what to buy, where to buy and how much to pay for a car. With comprehensive pricing information, side-by-side comparison tools, photo galleries, videos, unbiased editorial content and a large selection of new- and used-car inventory, Cars.com puts car buyers in control of their shopping process with the information they need to make confident buying decisions.
Launched in June 1998, Cars.com is a division of Classified Ventures, LLC™. Other Cars.com properties include NewCars.com®, managed by Cars.com Santa Monica, Motherproof.com™, and PickupTrucks.com™. Other divisions of Classified Ventures include Apartments.com and HomeGain.com, and the company also works with HomeFinder.com, its affiliate real estate partner. Classified Ventures, LLC, is owned by five leading media companies: Belo Corp., Gannett Co. Inc., The McClatchy Co., Tribune Co. and The Washington Post Co.
CDW is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government, education and healthcare.
Ranked No. 38 on Forbes’ list of America’s Largest Private Companies, CDW features dedicated account managers who help customers choose the right technology products and services to best meet their unique needs.
The company’s technology specialists offer expertise in designing customized solutions, while its advanced technology engineers assist customers with the implementation and long-term management of those solutions. Our offerings range from discrete hardware and software products to complex technology solutions such as virtualization, collaboration, security, mobility, data center optimization and cloud computing.
A just-in-time inventory model and two state-of-the-art distribution centers allows CDW to provide the latest technology with fast and accurate delivery. Approximately 2,000 custom-configured systems are shipped daily. CDW holds ISO 9001 and 14001 certifications.
CDW was founded in 1984 and employs more than 6,200 coworkers.
Classified Ventures operates leading businesses in the online classified advertising space: Cars.com, Apartments.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, a division of Apartments.com, and HomeGain.com. CV also works with its affiliate partner, HomeFinder.com, to provide online real estate listings.
We provide a complete set of auto, rental and home listings and relevant information to our shoppers, including detailed listing information, photo galleries, videos, home values, editorial content, blogs, and online calculators.
In addition, we provide our advertisers with targeted online marketing tools that effectively drive branding, traffic and leads back to their business and their listings.
closerlook is a relationship marketing firm specializing in healthcare. We help clients in the pharmaceutical, health insurance and health information technology industries establish long-term relationships with their customers.
Comcast Business Class gives Chicago area businesses the competitive edge to keep growing without slowing down. We provide the tools that companies need to help enhance productivity, like scalable internet and voice service, and high bandwidth fiber optic Metro Ethernet solutions. Comcast’s network covers 147,000 fiber route miles delivering the high network availability your business demands. For more information on how to give your business the benefits of bandwidth and scalability, please contact us or visit business.comcast.com.
Compuware solutions provide IT leaders with comprehensive, proven and scalable products, services and best practices for ensuring applications perform well and deliver value, regardless of the technology used.
Crowe Horwath LLP is one of the largest public accounting and consulting firms in the United States. Under its core purpose of “Building Value with Values®,” Crowe assists public and private company clients in reaching their goals through audit, tax, risk, and consulting services. With 25 offices and 2,500 personnel, Crowe is recognized by many organizations as one of the country’s best places to work. Crowe serves clients worldwide as an independent member of Crowe Horwath International, one of the largest networks in the world, consisting of more than 140 independent accounting and management consulting firms with offices in more than 400 cities around the world.
Digital Intelligence Systems Corporation (DISYS) is a global technology and business services consulting company that is known for its commitment to client satisfaction. Incorporated in 1994 & headquartered in McLean, VA as a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), DISYS is an information technology firm offering Staffing and end-to-end IT Consulting Services in areas of Implementations and Roll-Outs, Strategic Counseling, Support and Maintenance, Upgrades, BI, CRM and Testing for large and medium-sized companies. With offices and delivery locations spanning across North and South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, DISYS has earned a reputation for offering around the clock deployment, outstanding client service, and state-of-the-art solutions.
Forté Knowledge is a professional development training organization committed to academic excellence. Our primary functions are to teach, preserve, and expand the knowledge which is essential in attaining educational and career goals.
At Forté Knowledge, we see that there is a significant need in concentrated, short-term career and seminar training programs that allow students to find employment or enhance their skills to achieve better careers. We also believe that intensive short-term academic programs fulfill the needs of persons desiring to make a career change without having enough time to complete a full-time college program. Our programs address the needs of these people.
Forté Knowledge offers courses in the fields of Software Quality Assurance, Android Mobile Development, Java/Object-Oriented Programming and Project Management without departures from our specialty fields. These programs are of a short duration and in order to complete them, students must be focused as they go through an intensive, extensive, and specialty-geared curriculum.
Forté Knowledge is sensitive to the needs of every student as they work to achieve the objectives of the programs. Our classes are small with a maximum of 15 students per class. This allows our highly qualified instructors working in the current field to involve all students in class activities. This also allows us to differentiate our instruction to meet the finding the right approach to each student — the approach that will maximize each student’s unique capabilities and potential for advancement. We invite all prospective students to audit the classes, meet the students and instructors prior to making a final decision to enroll.
We believe that Forté Knowledge’s educational methods are effective and expedient. We trust you will too.
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. We deliver the technology-related insight necessary for our clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, we are the valuable partner to 60,000 clients in 11,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, we work with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,400 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries.
Note: When our About Gartner is appearing in an externally produced document (another organization’s brochure, program guide, etc.), add the Gartner call to action below:
We believe that when teams are set up for success, they can deliver predictably each and every time.
We have identified best practices that allow for this, and we apply those practices to deliver award-winning custom software solutions for our clients.
Founded in 1999 as a Chicago-based IT staffing services and solutions company, Geneva Technical Services (“GTS”) is a leading provider of IT talent to Fortune 1000 companies on a contract, contract-to-hire and permanent basis. GTS’ client-focused approach to forming long-term relationships with customers is the foundation of the company’s success and a high-quality talent recruiting process ensures customers are presented with the best IT talent available in the market. GTS’s success and continuous growth over the last 11 years is attributed to the belief that creating incremental differentiation in each area of customer and candidate service is the key to forming long-term successful partnerships with our customers.
International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed “Big Blue” (for its official corporate color), is a global technology and innovation company headquartered in Armonk, New York. IBM is the largest technology and consulting employer in the world, with more than 400,000 employees serving clients in 170 countries. The company offers a wide range of infrastructure, hosting and consulting services; a broad portfolio of middleware for collaboration, predictive analytics, software development and systems management; and the world’s most advanced servers and supercomputers. Utilizing its business consulting, technology and R&D expertise, IBM helps clients around the world become “smarter” as the planet becomes more digitally interconnected. That includes working with organizations and governments to build systems that improve traffic congestion, food safety, the availability of clean water, and the health and safety of populations. IBM is a hub of innovation and invests more than $6 billion a year in R&D, holding more patents than any other U.S. technology company, just completing its 17th year of patent leadership. IBM Research has received recognition far beyond any other commercial technology research organization and is home to 5 Nobel Laureates, 9 US National Medals of Technology, 5 US National Medals of Science, 6 Turing Awards, and 10 Inductees in US National Inventors Hall of Fame. The company was behind the inventions of the PC; the continuous blood separator used to treat critically ill leukemia patients; the method for using excimer lasers that eventually became photorefractive (LASIK) eye surgery; the SABRE travel reservation system; relational databases; and much more. IBM has pioneered the corporate operating model for the 21st century, changing from a classic “multinational” to a global integrated company with a highly skilled global workforce managed by a common set of values.
Insight Moves Your Technology Goals Forward
Now more than ever it’s important to have an IT solutions partner who can help you accomplish more of your IT goals, achieve new efficiencies and realize cost savings every step of the way. Whether you need fast access to essential technologies or the support of technical experts for the strategic planning and deployment of solutions, Insight can help.
Insight’s unique model combines an array of advanced services and expert technical resources with a far-reaching supply chain to provide you the level of solution support you need – whenever you need it. Our technology practices bring deep technical skills in vital solution areas to help you implement strategic technologies. Our Lifecycle and Management Services give you new ways to balance changing IT priorities and limited resources.
Insight’s broad technical scope and capabilities offer a single-source for diverse IT goals. With a complete portfolio of hardware, software and services, Insight can help you at every stage – from planning to implementation to ongoing management. Let us know how we can help keep your IT strategy moving forward.
Our company leadership team has extensive experience in IT staffing and recruiting. We believe that investing in our employees through continued education, training and development programs is paramount to our success.
Everyone at Instant Technology is a recruiter – that’s our philosophy. We find it rewarding to help talented professionals advance their IT careers and find jobs they love. As a result, we find ourselves recruiting nearly everywhere we go. It’s part of the pro-active recruiting environment that exemplifies Instant Technology’s culture.
Equally important to our company is the trust that our clients and candidates place in us. These relationships are the core of our business. We strive to satisfy both our clients and consultants. Our two-tiered organizational structure is in place to ensure that our account managers and recruiters are meeting the needs of both our clients and candidates with the utmost professionalism at all times.
Instant Technology is a Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, City of Chicago and State of Illinois certified Woman-owned Business Enterprise.
Founded in 1976, Juno Lighting, LLC is a leader in offering high-quality and innovative commercial and residential lighting solutions. Under the Juno Lighting Group umbrella, the company comprises seven product brands: Juno®, Indy™, Alfa™, AccuLite™, Aculux®, NaviLite® and DanaLite. The product brands provide lighting fixtures that are attractive, well-engineered and easy to install. For more information on Juno Lighting Group and its family of brands, visit www.junolightinggroup.com. Juno Lighting Group is a subsidiary of Schneider Electric, the world’s power and control leader.
KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm (www.us.kpmg.com), is the U.S. member firm of KPMG International Cooperative (“KPMG International”). KPMG International’s member firms have 138,000 professionals, including more than 7,900 partners, in 150 countries.
For eight decades, we have been developing industry-leading circuit protection products by working closely with our customers. These unique partnerships have led to such innovations as the first small, fast-acting protective fuse in 1927, the first automotive blade fuses and the world’s smallest SIDACtor® device. Littelfuse solutions can be found in virtually every product that requires electrical energy, from automobiles to computers to telecom devices. By combining our extensive product line with the knowledge of our application experts, we have the unique ability to evaluate customer needs and deliver the right solution. See history in microsite.
Shaped by our city and our Jesuit traditions, Loyola University Chicago offers students an educational environment unmatched for its diversity of thought and experience.
With three campuses spread throughout the greater Chicago area-including along the stunning shoreline of Lake Michigan and in the heart of downtown’s Magnificent Mile-students have access to hundreds of cultural institutions as well as thousands of internships and networking opportunities with the city’s Fortune 500 companies. Study-abroad programs at our Rome and Beijing Centers provide engagement with the global community and economy.
While rigorous programs of research and study are one hallmark of a Jesuit education, we’re not just preparing students for a career, we’re preparing them for life. We challenge our students to learn broadly, to think critically, to serve generously, to lead with integrity, to respect diversity. We come from all faiths and ethnic and economic backgrounds, with a common purpose of building a better society.
At McGuireWoods, we deliver quality work, personalized service and exceptional value. We use technology to provide efficient legal solutions and employ a diverse workforce to bring real-world and innovative perspectives to meet our clients’ needs. With approximately 900 lawyers and 19 strategically located offices worldwide, McGuireWoods uses client-focused teams to serve public, private, government and nonprofit clients from many industries including automotive, energy resources, health care, technology and transportation.
Molex is a leading one-source supplier of interconnect products. Our team of highly skilled experts is focused on the design, development and distribution of innovative product solutions that touch virtually every walk of life. Our portfolio is among the world’s most extensive, with over 100,000 reliable products, including everything from electronic, electrical and fiber optic interconnects to switches and application tooling.
We leverage extensive worldwide resources to meet customer needs on a local, regional and global level. Molex offers well-established sales, product development, manufacturing and logistics resources in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Our engineering, development and manufacturing capabilities are organized into three product divisions, all serviced by the Molex Global Sales and Marketing Division.
MoreDirect is an industry-leading IT solutions provider offering enterprise clients a cost-effective and flexible solution to streamline the acquisition of IT hardware, software and services.
Our unique model empowers businesses to make informed IT procurement decisions prior to purchase, ensuring visible cost savings and a tangible return on technology investments. MoreDirect puts the entire IT supply chain of live inventory at your fingertips, allowing you to electronically evaluate, price compare, bid, purchase, manage and report on your IT assets.
Our comprehensive portfolio of technology products and services coupled with our highly knowledgeable and experienced staff makes MoreDirect the best partner to meet all your IT needs.
Northern Trust Corporation (Nasdaq:NTRS) is a leading provider of investment management, asset and fund administration, fiduciary and banking solutions for corporations, institutions and affluent individuals worldwide.
Here’s the elevator pitch:
Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company.
Need more detail? Well, we’re known primarily for three things:
And did we mention that all of it runs in the cloud?
Low cost. Low risk. Fast results. Our 87,200 successful customers tell the story best.
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. Founded in 1972, SAP (which stands for “Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing”) has a rich history of innovation and growth as a true industry leader. Today, SAP has sales and development locations in more than 50 countries worldwide. SAP applications and services enable more than 109,000 customers worldwide to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably.
From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device, SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. We do this by extending the availability of software across on-premise installations, on-demand deployments and mobile devices.
We believe that the power of our people, products, and partners unleashes growth and creates significant new value for our customers, SAP, and ultimately, entire industries and the economy at large.
Our mission is to help companies of all sizes and industries to run better. Our vision is to help the world run better.
Schneider Electric is the global specialist of energy management, focused on making energy safe, reliable, productive, efficient and green.
Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, operating in the industry, energy and healthcare sectors. For over 160 years, Siemens has stood for technological excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality. The company is the world’s largest provider of environmental technologies, generating some €28 billion – more than one-third of its total revenue – from green products and solutions. In fiscal 2010, which ended on September 30, 2010, revenue totaled €76 billion and net income €4.1 billion. At the end of September 2010, Siemens had around 405,000 employees worldwide.
SIM Chicago is the Chicago Chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM). It’s the premier network for IT leaders comprised of CIO’s, senior IT executives, prominent academicians, consultants, and other IT leaders. SIM Chicago is a community of thought leaders in the Chicago area who share experiences and rich intellectual capital that is applied, and who explore future IT direction.
ThoughtWorks is not your typical technology company. We are talented, driven, and principled people who are passionate about software and the role it plays in the future of our world. We support clients that are on the front line of innovative change, working with Fortune 500 companies and bleeding edge startups that are revolutionizing the way their industries work. Today ThoughtWorks employ over 1800 people in 22 cities across the globe, exploring high value business application development at the complex intersection of Agile and the Enterprise strategy. ThoughtWorks delivers creative change.
Headquartered in Itasca, IL, with satellite offices in both downtown Chicago and Dallas, TransTech IT Staffing is a leading provider of contract, contract-to-hire, and direct hire services of IT professionals.
A Women Business Enterprise (WBE)-Certified IT recruiting firm, we have been delivering professional, flexible, and personable recruiting services since 1990. We serve a national clientele on a local, regionalized basis and are a Tier One vendor at a number of Fortune 500 companies. We are also experts at working within Vendor Management System (VMS) models.
The industries we work with include: healthcare, insurance, finance, state and local government, and banking. Our reputation is built on our ability to offer a wealth of recruiting experience and expertise, a vast network of candidates, and an unwavering commitment to building strong and lasting relationships with our clients, the consultants we place, and the professional communities in which we work.
TTX Company is North America’s leading provider of railcars and related freight car management services to the North American rail industry. Our pool of railcars – over 200,000 cars strong - is ideal for supporting shippers in the intermodal, automotive, lumber, machinery, building materials, steel, and other commodity groups where flatcars, boxcars, and gondolas are required.
TTX is owned by North America’s leading railroads, providing railcars on a usage basis thereby allowing railroads to conserve their capital for other critical infrastructure needs. More important, however, TTX railcars free-run between railroads providing a fungible asset that minimizes total empty miles further lowering costs for the industry. Customers easily recognize TTX’s bright yellow cars as a consistent, high quality, well-maintained fleet that serves many transportation needs.
United Stationers Inc. is a leading North American wholesale distributor of business products, with 2009 net sales of $4.7 billion. The company stocks approximately 100,000 items from over 1,000 manufacturers. This includes a broad and deep selection of technology products, office products, office furniture, janitorial and breakroom supplies, and industrial products. (Click here for more product information.)
The company has 64 distribution centers through which it provides a high level of customer service, and next to second-day delivery to the contiguous U.S. and major cities in Mexico, providing a 98% on-time delivery rate in 2009.
United Stationers primarily serves commercial and contract business products dealers and industrial product distributors. Its customer base includes more than 25,000 resellers - such as office products dealers; contract stationers; office products superstores; computer products resellers; office furniture dealers; mass merchandisers; mail order companies; sanitary supply, paper and foodservice distributors; drug and grocery store chains; e-commerce merchants; oil field, welding supply and industrial/MRO distributors; and other independent distributors. They in turn serve many geographic markets and have a diverse end-consumer base. United Stationers also offers its customers an unmatched suite of value-added training and marketing programs, which help to build their businesses.
Our stock is traded on The NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol USTR.
w3r is a sixteen-year-old privately held Technology Consulting firm headquartered in Southfield, Michigan. Combining many years of diverse industry experience and exposure, w3r can objectively view our customers’ challenges and recommend a solution that meets both their current and future needs for both infrastructure and integration services and support.
Our mission is to provide companies with flexibility, by providing the highest quality resources, services and solutions to help build versatile, reliable and agile solutions to support your business needs.
At w3r, our goal is to maximize your existing people, processes and technology to align your technical capabilities with your business goals.
w3r Consulting is a respected member of the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council (MMSDC), the Chicago Minority Development Council (CMBC), the South Central Ohio Minority Supplier Development Council (SCOMSDC), the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council (VMSDC) and the Louisiana Minority Supplier Development Council (LMSDC).
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