The Annual Report Card Event: A Night To Remember

The lights were dimmed low; a certain anticipation hung in the air. The faint sound of glasses clicking could be heard left and right. The event? Not a vendor "world premiere" or a product debut. This was VARBusiness' 17th Annual Report Card, and the amount of electricity in the air could almost curl your hair. At least my hair (1) (with Macromedia's Dominic Gallello).

In my seven-year tenure at VARBusiness, this was my third time presenting at the event with senior executive editor T.C. Doyle (6), with Cisco's Paul Mountford, right. Each year, the evening seems to carry more cache and be even more well-received. So, on Aug. 22, more than 700 solution providers and their vendors packed a ballroom in the San Diego Marriott (4). Editorial director Robert C. DeMarzo (2) and publisher Mike Uliss, with IBM's Frank Vitaliano, left (3), hosted the evening, which was sponsored by Lexmark, Novell, Seagate, Symantec and be Flat. As this is traditionally a black-tie optional event, the audience was dressed to the nines. (I was nearly blinded by all the sequins.)

For those not in-the-know, VARBusiness' ARC awards recognize vendor excellence in a number of areas, including product innovation, support and partnership. More than 4,500 solution providers in 15 product categories were surveyed about their level of satisfaction with their vendor partners. After all the surveys were collected, processed and tallied, we ended up handing out a total of 45 awards in 15 categories, plus four special awards. We'll have complete results in our Oct. 14 issue, but, for now, here are some of my immediate impressions.

Some of the winners were longtime channel advocates, such as IBM's fourth consecutive win in the server category for its iSeries. For others, timing was everything. Just two days after announcing it would welcome white-box builders into its fold, Dell's director Mark Thompson picked up an award for entry-level servers. That's quite a nice way to begin an "official" channel partnership.

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In With the New
Dell's win was not a shock, however; last year the PC-maker also finished first in this category. But there were a few surprises, as when long-time display champ ViewSonic was swept out of that category by NEC/Mitsubishi (5) (T.J. Trojan with VARBusiness' Uliss). And maybe it was just me, but I thought I saw a few eyebrows rise when we announced HP-UX beat out Microsoft and Novell.

VARBusiness offered a few surprises of its own, as well. This year we added two new categories to the ARC: Loyalty and Channel Executive of the year. Data networking leader Avaya led the charge in loyalty. But clearly the evening's highlight was the crowning of the channel's top player,a person whose commitment to the channel has been unflappable. Allyson Seelinger, vice president of North America enterprise and consumer channels at Symantec, which won the security management software category, was, in her own words, "speechless" at winning the award (7), with VARBusiness' DeMarzo.

One guy who was most definitely not speechless was John Pinette, recently named the American Comedy Awards Stand-up Comic of the Year. Pinette provided the night's headline entertainment, and did an excellent job. But to me, the true headliners of the event were the solution providers who answered the surveys. The VARs who put vendors to the test each and every day are the ones who make the ARC possible. I just have one word for all you people: Thanks.

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