Who's Who At the 16th Annual Report Card Awards Gala

If there are four words in the English language that can whet the appetite with anticipation, they are, "And the winner is..." When you're being considered for an award, let's face it, you want to win. And when you know that all your top competitors are in the audience, you want that win all the more. If you haven't attended the ARC awards ceremony, imagine it as the Oscars of the IT industry.

It's glitzy and glamorous, and only the best in the business can cross the stage to accept their awards. Our 2001 ARC Awards gala took place August 28 at the Walt Disney Dolphin Hotel in Orlando, Fla., with an introduction from CMP Technology Solutions Group president Robert Faletra.

While nearly 1,000 industry onlookers watched, key executives from the winning companies proudly took center stage, accepting the awards their VAR customers bestowed upon them, signifying a vote of confidence in their companies' products and performance during the past year.

The ARC is based on a survey of 5,000-plus solution providers, evaluating more than 70 vendors in 15 product and service categories. Top honors were bestowed upon Sun, Compaq, IBM, Cisco, Novell, Microsoft, Veritas, Tivoli, Macromedia, Seagate and ViewSonic. WorldCom won for Business-Class IP Services, a new ARC category this year.

And a number of other companies were recognized for outstanding performance in many of the ARC's subcategories. Special recognition went to ViewSonic (see photo above with ViewSonic CEO James Chu, VARBusiness editorial director Robert DeMarzo and VARBusiness publisher Michael Uliss), which garnered a Lifetime Achievement Award for its sequential successes and continued improvement of scores, and to Veritas, which was named this year's Breakthrough Player of the Year.

Watch for our ARC issue, debuting October 1. Inside, you'll find the story behind the scores as well as interviews with top executives from a number of the companies examined in the study. Find out how your partners fared and what your competitors think of the companies you're doing business with. It's a must-read issue you'll want to reference time and time again.