Winners Crowned At Annual Report Card Gala

You voted. We listened. They took home the crystal. Familiar faces and a host of newcomers shared center stage this week at the 2001 VARBusiness Annual Report Card gala, held in conjunction with CMP's Breakaway XChange in Orlando, Fla.

More than 700 vendors, partners and solution providers joined VARBusiness editors and staffers for the event, which was sponsored by Avaya, Front-Range, Lexmark, Novell, PTC, Qwest and Seagate. Entertainment was provided by comedian Jeff Foxworthy.

The ARC, in its 16th year, asks solution providers to rate their vendor partners on various criteria, including product/pricing, support and partnership potential. This year, more than 5,000 solution providers were surveyed, evaluating more than 70 vendor programs across 15 product and service categories.

Top honors went to the following vendors:

%95 Sun Microsystems (advanced desktops and workstations, and network storage)

%95 Compaq Computer (notebook computers)

%95 IBM (entry-level and midrange servers)

%95 Cisco Systems (voice and data networking)

%95 Seagate (disk drives)

%95 ViewSonic (display technology)

%95 Novell (enterprise operating platforms)

%95 Microsoft (database software)

%95 Veritas (storage management software)

%95 Tivoli (security management software)

%95 Macromedia (application development and deployment tools, and Internet application server software)

In addition, WorldCom walked off with a win in business-class IP services, a new ARC category this year.

Two awards were also given for overall performance. ViewSonic was honored with VARBusiness' third Lifetime Achievement Award for placing first in its category for five consecutive years, while Veritas was singled out as ARC Breakthrough Player of the Year.

For more on the gala and complete coverage of all ARC results, check out www.varbusiness.com/sections/main/2001arc.asp.