According to latest BrandZ report announced by Millward Brown Optimor, the value of the 100 top brands rose 4 percent to more than $2 trillion. As per the report, in the top ten positions, there are only three non-tech brands: McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Marlboro. Rest of the ranks are taken by tech biggies like Google, IBM, and Apple etc. This shows the increased value of technology in our today's lives.

Here, the feature discusses about the top technology brands and the reasons for their success.

Google Inc.

Google, the search giant leads the 100 top brands with a brand value of $114bn. Its brand value surged by 14 per cent to become the world's strongest brand. The search engine has reported more than 1 billion searches daily combined with the popularity of products like YouTube, Gmail, and the Android mobile phone platform. The company has earned $6.5 billion from $23.7 billion in revenue in 2009, primarily from online ad sales.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)

As compare to last year, IBM aka Big Blue grew another 30 percent in value and reached second position replacing Microsoft. In 2009, the company was at number four. It is more than 100-years old, with over 4 lakh employees worldwide.

The Armonk, New York based IBM brand experienced 24 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) during the past five years and now has a brand value of $86.3 billion. The company had launched its "A Smarter Planet" global campaign in 2009, which also boosted its brand image.

Apple

Apple has reported 32 percent increase in its brand value, due to launch of its iconic products like iPad and iPhone 3G. The company is reportedly changing lives of the people with its devices. In 2009, the iPhones' sales surged 100 percent year-on-year basis to 8.7 million with over one lac apps available for download. The company reported brand value of $83.15 billion, slightly lower than IBM.

Microsoft Corp.

This year the Redmond, Washington based software giant, Microsoft has reported brand value of $76,344, which is somewhat similar to last years'. In 2009, the company had launched its new operating system – Windows 7, which was accompanied by an extensive ad campaign. The launch helped the company to maintain its leadership position. Microsoft has operations in more than hundred countries and employs nearly 80,000 people.

Hewlett-Packard

As compare to last year, HP, one of the world's largest IT companies that operates in nearly every country, posted an increase of almost 50% in its brand value. The reasons cited for the improvement are the rebranding of EDS (Electronic Data Systems) and brand re-launch in 2009. The company reported brand value of $39,717 billion.  Further, the company also attempted to bring new innovations with its HP brand under the tagline "Let's Do Amazing."

Blackberry (RIM)

Research In Motion, the BlackBerry smartphone maker has ranked at number fourteen with a brand value of $30.7 billion. The company reported a 12 percent surge in its brand value compare to last year.

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Symantec is planning to roll out an aggressive training and certification drive in order to create specialist partners in multiple domains like security, risk management, and storage management.

“Specialization adds weight to partners’ credentials and gives them better acceptance among customers. We want to move our partners up the value chain by enabling them to offer the multiple solutions and services, be it security, storage, or even systems management. This is the best way they can grow their Symantec business, and also offer customers with more reasons to work with them,” said Vineet Sood, Director, Channel and Alliance, Symantec India.

Recently, the security vendor bolstered its data management and backup portfolio with Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup7.

To leverage on the increasing interest in the cloud, Symantec has started offerings cloud services from MessageLabs such as clear pipe and Web security. “The services would be on the cloud, but the resale model remains the same. The cloud offerings would be sold on a subscription basis. Symantec would own and maintain the support and SLAs,” Sood informed.

The company is looking at enhancing the partner base to promote cloud services. Apart from leveraging existing partners, it is scouting for more partners to increase its reach in the market. Symantec is also offering a reward program through which partners can get incentives on the incremental business they do over previous years.

Apart from this, the existing programs such has Sym University and Partner Net have been enhanced to offer more tools to partners to ensure they get all required information with ease. Under the Partner Net program, Symantec has come out with is a new tool called Sym Brain. It allows partners to relay customer issues and find solutions for the problem to offer its consumer complete consultancy for any business related problems.