IBM, Allaire Singled Out For Annual Report Card Honors

Vendors IBM and Allaire were singled out for two special recognition awards in this year's VARBusiness Annual Report Card awards competition.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM won the second annual "Lifetime Achievement Award" for its overall performance during the 15 years of ARC competition. Allaire captured the new "Breakthrough Player" trophy awarded for the first time this year for a surprisingly strong and unexpected performance in winning the enterprise development tools category and tying for first place in the Internet Software category. Allaire was chosen for the new award on the basis of its strong ratings by survey participants.

As a breakthrough player Allaire, Newton, Mass., beat out such established software companies as Borland/Inprise, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sybase. Solution providers gave Allaire dominant scores in such areas of the survey as product availability, revenue/profit potential, communication, channel strategy and ease of doing business. The company gained particularly high scores in product availability and communication.

Radio was on the scene at the ARC Awards. Tune in and listen to post-show interviews with the winners.



IBM received the Lifetime Achievement Award for its notable scores in a variety of product categories during the 15-year history of the ARC Awards. IBM was singled out not only for the number of awards it has received in the competition over the years, but for the improvement in the scores it has shown in more recent years as it strengthened a variety of channel and support programs.

"This award is given out in recognition of outstanding performance in the ARC over a long period of time across a wide assortment of survey categories," says Robert DeMarzo, VARBusiness editorial director. "IBM had a somewhat difficult time in the early years of the competition, but over the last five years, its performance has improved tremendously across the board."

Patricia Meacham, vice president, Global PartnerWorld, accepted the award for IBM. She is responsible for the worldwide marketing and enablement programs for all IBM Business Partners. Such programs support new partner revenue opportunities in hardware, software, services and finance offerings in support of IBM's e-business strategy.

Last year, Hewlett-Packard received the original Lifetime Achievement Award.