Who Could Break Into The Top Five In 2018?

"The top five aren't going to change," Lovelock told CRN, who noted a big gulf between the revenue levels in that "rarefied air" of vendors, and the rest. But below the top five, he said that Amazon – led by Amazon Web Services - rose from No. 20 to No. 12, while Alibaba jumped from No. 42 to No. 31, which supports Gartner's belief that businesses are plowing more investment toward the growth areas of cloud-driven digital business.

Lovelock specifically cited Amazon and Hewlett Packard Enterprise as being well positioned for more digital business success.

But as for the top five? "That revenue pecking order isn’t going to change much," he said.