Vendors Shine At 2007 ARC Awards

This year's VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) Awards were handed out Tuesday in front of a packed house at the CMP XChange conference, at the Dolphin Hotel in Orlando, Fla. Following a comedy show by Joey Kola, CMP channel group president Robert Faletra took the stage with CMP channel group Vice President and Editor of VARBusiness Robert DeMarzo, Online Editor Larry Hooper, Industry Editor Craig Zarley and News Editor Steve Burke to present the coveted ARC awards to vendors in 15 technology categories.

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Slide Show: 2007 ARC Awards Recognize Partner Satisfaction

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The awards result from a study in which solution-provider partners rate their vendor partners across five areas -- Product Innovation, Support, Partnership, Loyalty and overall Company of the Year.

The evening's highlight is the presentation of the coveted CMP Channel Group's Channel Executive of the Year Award, presented on behalf of VARBusiness, CRN, the Institute for Partner Education and Development (IPED) and CMP's XChange Group. The 2007 award went to Rauline Ochs, senior vice president for Oracle's North America Alliance and Channels organization. Ochs expanded the company's reliance and engagement with partners across all its commercial markets, and took the company's industry-defining sales methodology and ported it to the channel to ensure than everyone was speaking the same language to customers.

With more than 18 years of experience in technology sales, marketing, and operations, she leads a team responsible for Oracle's sales through partners. Her impressive career includes tenure at BEA Systems as senior vice president of worldwide alliances, as well as 18 years at IBM.

Category Winners Oracle itself won Company of the Year in Business Software-Management, tying with Sage for the honor. Oracle won the Product Innovation subcategory and tied with Sage for first in Support, while Sage won the Partnership subcategory. Sage did win Company of the Year in the Business Software-Strategic category, winning all subcategories except Product Innovation, which it ceded to Microsoft Business Solutions.

This year in mobile computers, HP dominated, winning every subcategory, thereby walking away with Company of the Year in that category. Last year, HP tied with Toshiba for that distinction. On the server side, HP again ruled the roost, with HP Proliant winning every subcategory in the Mainstream Business Servers. The category is new to the ARC this year, replacing the Entry-Level and Midrange Server categories, both of which HP won in 2006.

Cisco was the big winner in Voice Networking Hardware category, sweeping the subcategories and taking Company of the Year honors. In the Network Infrastructure category, Cisco and Adtran tied for Company of the Year; Cisco took the Product Innovation subcategory, while Adtran came in first in Support and Partnership. 2007 marks Adtran's first year in the ARC.

In the Security Software category, Company of the Year Sophos stole the spotlight from Cisco, last year's winner. Sophos won accolades in every subcategory. Cisco did win Wireless Networking Company of the Year, winning every subcategory.

The Storage Management category was swept by EMC. The storage powerhouse also tied for Company of the Year in the Network Storage category; that honor EMC shared with HP. The category was full of tough competitors: In the subcategories, EMC and Network Appliance won in Product Innovation, EMC and HP won in Support and HP won in Partnership.

And there was no surprise in Display Technology as Samsung once again took the top prize as Company of the Year, dominating every category. In addition, Intel had a repeat performance as Company of the Year in Client and Server Processors.

The Data and Information Management Software category saw some stiff competition with Oracle winning for Product Innovation, tying with IBM winning for Support and tying with Microsoft in Partnership. Overall, Oracle won Company of the Year for the category.

Juniper beat out Cisco overall in Security Appliances, winning the Product Innovation and Partnership subcategories; Cisco took Support.

Xerox made a strong showing in the Network Color Printer category, taking Company of the Year with wins in Product Innovation and Support, but losing the Partnership subcategory to Ricoh, last year's overall winner in printers.