In that spirit, I wanted to recount the winners of the Global Technology Distribution Council's first "Rising Stars" awards. These trophies go to high-tech companies that are growing sales fastest through distributors among their respective revenue categories

The GTDC, which met last week in San Francisco, set up three different revenue categories in which to grant recognition. The numbers are collected for the group by the NPD Group, with its Distributor Track service. (CRN regularly publishes data from this service.)

Among vendors with more than $100 million in annual sales through distribution, notebook and peripherals powerhouse Acer America emerged victorious. Juniper Networks got the nod among vendors with $20 million to $100 million in sales flowing through distribution. And, the fastest-growing software publisher with at least $20 million in annual sales through U.S. distribution was EMC.

Several other results also intrigued me. For one thing, the second- and third-place winners in the uber-$100 million category were both big storage names: Hitachi and Network Appliance.

Elsewhere, the second-place vendor in the $20 million to $100 million category was Ergotron, a supplier of technology for ergonomic mounting of displays and mobile systems. Big-time in fleet management and vertical apps.

And the runner-up in software was Linux open source darling Red Hat. Should be interesting to see how its recent move to include JBoss in its distribution plans affects next year's numbers.