Industry ‘Who’s Who’ At VARBusiness 500 Awards

The event, which was held at The Lighthouse restaurant at Chelsea Piers, was sponsored by a number of leading high-tech vendors: BEA, FrontRange Solutions, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Samsung, Seagate and SMC.

The VARBusiness 500, which is in its 13th year of publication, ranks the largest solution providers in the industry according to their annual revenue. This year, the members of the list generated a total of more than $278 billion, said Robert C. DeMarzo, CMP vice president and VARBusiness editorial director, in a presentation he made during the event. DeMarzo also noted that the number beats the previous year's by more than $30 billion, attesting to how the solution provider industry is still growing despite the difficult economic conditions.

While every VARBusiness 500 company in attendance received a plaque recognizing the distinction, special awards were also given out to select companies to recognize their leadership and performance in 10 specific categories.

IBM Global Services, which ranked the highest on the VARBusiness 500 with 2000 revenue of more than $33 billion, was one of the big winners of the evening, taking home three separate awards for its 2000 performance, including the VARBusiness 500 Vanguard Award, the Vertical Limit Award in financial services and the Reader's Choice award, which was voted on by visitors to VARBusiness.com.

The dinner and awards event quickly turned into a networking session for the many companies in attendance. In fact, many executives remarked that the event was one of the only venues they knew of that managed to attract such a wide variety of VARs, integrators and solution providers in the same room.

"I'm very much impressed with the level of executives who attended across the whole industry," said Mark Elliott, general manager of IBM Global Services, Americas, who was on hand to accept its three awards. "We've heard some really great success stories here tonight. If you weren't excited about the high-tech industry before--specifically this part of the industry--then being here tonight should certainly make you excited."

Click below for the awards categories and the recipients:

Executives of the Year
Jade Systems Corporation--Debbi Milner
Amherst Corporate Computer Sales and Solutions--Ron Dupler
SequoiaNet.com--John Bamberger
InfoSystems--Mark Stellini

Lifetime Achievement Award
The Reynolds and Reynolds

Editor's Choice
Avcom Technologies

Reader's Choice
IBM Global Services

Upper Echelon
XOR
Siemens Medical
C-Bridge Internet Solutions
Zefer
USinternetworking

Corporate Climbers
Breakaway Solutions
C-Bridge Internet Solutions
Zefer
Dimension Data
USinternetworking
Rare Medium
Exodus

Comeback Performer of the Year
Prologic Management Systems

Vanguard Award
IBM Global Services

Vertical Limit Awards
IBM Global Services--Financial Services
Plural--Financial Services
PTC--Manufacturing
Siemens Health Services--Healthcare

Technology Leader Awards
Manchester Technologies--Networking
Novo--E-Business Software
CSC--Enterprise Applications
Interactive Futures--Unix Servers