Some swallow hard at those rates, he says, but the higher fees reflect the competitive salaries that industry experts now command. You have to constantly work at it. You're never there. Shedding its specialty in Unix storage and subsystems, Acropolis threw its lot in with Sun Microsystems Inc. and signed on as a network integrator doing high-availability implementations. But making the switch to a professional-services organization is arduous, says Keenan Klinger, executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Growth requires careful attention and proceeds in fits and starts.
Services account for 60 percent of sales. Hardware and products make up 40 percent, with Hewlett-Packard Co. products comprising the largest chunk. Actium's business practices run the gamut from World Wide Web development and data warehousing to business-process analysis. It has six offices and 350 employees. But this is not the case anymore.