IT Vendors, Oracle's Rauline Ochs Have That Winning Feeling

The industry's top-performing IT vendors were honored by CRN sister publication VARBusiness at its Annual Report Card awards ceremony held during the recent XChange 2007 conference in Orlando, Fla. Winners included a mix of traditional players and newcomers, but what captivated the audience most was the prestigious award for Channel Executive of the Year, which was presented to Oracle Senior Vice President Rauline Ochs.

Under her tenure, Oracle has made its most dramatic advances in the channel—especially in the midmarket sector and in quelling channel conflict. Ochs, an industry veteran who worked for IBM's software group and BEA Systems before joining Oracle, was showered with flowers by both CMP Channel and her staff after the award was announced. She received a standing ovation from nearly 1,000 solution providers and vendor executives and seemed a bit shell-shocked as she took to the podium to thank her team and the channel.

Among those taking home trophies for top honors in partner satisfaction were Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Adtran, EMC, Oracle, Sophos, Juniper, Xerox, Samsung, Sage and Intel. While those vendors were honored as ARC Companies of the Year, several others received honors for individual achievement in partnership, support and product innovation including Ricoh, IBM's Data and Information Management Group, Microsoft and Network Appliance.