2007 CRN Channel Champions: Networking

The vendor's overall category rating of 69.6 was just enough to beat HP's 69.2 rating, while SonicWall was not far behind with a 68.4. Rounding out the competition were Cisco's Linksys division (66.4), Netgear (64.6), D-Link (63.4) and 3Com (62.7).

While Cisco actually trailed HP by small margins in the technical satisfaction and financial factors ratings, it burnished its reputation as a friend to the channel by capturing the highest rating for the program and support criteria subcategory by more than 2 points.

"I can tell you, from a channel partner's perspective, these guys are on top of their game," said Jack Kirby, vice president of sales at Troubadour, a Houston VAR. "And this is not something new. They drive profitability into the channel. The competition is nowhere close."

Two technical areas where Cisco earned the highest ratings were security and product quality and reliability.

Kirby said Cisco's dedication to security has been a key factor in the success of Troubadour, which was recently named Cisco's Security Partner of the Year for the South Region, Commercial Market.

"They have finally got a whole suite of products where they can say that Cisco's goal is to secure everything. The dream of end-to-end security is now a reality. They offer that pure solution that nobody else can touch now," Kirby said.

Cisco partners weren't particularly concerned with the vendor's financial ratings, which were low across the board for all SMB networking hardware finalists.

"Hardware margins aren't a big part of our business," said Tracy Butler, president of Acropolis Technology, Wood River, Ill. "It's the services we sell around the product that we're concerned about."

And Butler, like many Cisco partners, is pretty happy.

"We choose all of our vendor partners based on quality of product. So from a technology standpoint, that's why we picked Cisco in the first place," he said.

—Damon Poeter

VENDOR TECHNICAL PROGRAM & SUPPORT FINANCIAL OVERALL Cisco 84.1 72.8 54.5 69.6 Hewlett-Packard 84.4 70.5 55.1 69.1 SonicWall 83.3 70.8 53.6 68.4 Linksys 79 69.9 51.4 66.4 Netgear 77.7 68.3 49.9 64.6 D-Link 76 66.6 49.7 63.4 3Com 76.9 65.6 48 62.7

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