#5 vendor in 2007 revenue: Epic

This is an epic (sorry) achievement: first weighing in with HI's Top 100 list in 1996 at $27M in annual revenue, in a dozen years Epic has grown to just over a half-billion dollars in annual revenue, a twenty-fold increase! That's almost as much as oil has gone up in 15 years...

 What's more amazing, like Meditech (where Judy Faulkner had prior experience), Epic does not sell hardware, so those revenue figures are not included in their $503B reported for 2007. Since hardware represents as much as 25% of the typical deal these days, Epic could well be at $600M a year in revenue if they sold servers like all the other vendors do. Epic is rightly renowned for their EMR/CPOE expertise, with their EpiCare product easily leading sales in the large hospital, AMC and multi-hospital IDN market segment. They tried selling to mid-size hospitals through Philips a few years ago under the name "Extensis," but have since dropped that avenue and now sell directly only and usually to only the largest and most prestigious clients, like Kaiser. Epic started humbly in the ambulatory space, automating physician practices' revenue cycle and EMRs, and have since expanded into the full suite of HIS applications. Some say they're still better at ambulatory than acute care, but with this much sales success, they are learning the hospital world awfully fast!