2016 Annual Report Card Winners: Channel Partners Give Top Marks To Key Vendors

Strength In Numbers

For the 31st year, CRN offered solution providers across North America a chance to take out their red pens and grade their vendor partners as part of CRN’s Annual Report Card.

Solution providers scored vendors in 25 product categories according to three sets of criteria: product innovation, support and partnership. Those, in turn, were made up of 17 subcategories, such as product quality and reliability under product innovation, training under support, and revenue and profit potential under partnership.

Given the dynamism of the IT industry, CRN scrutinizes the ARC product categories every year and adds, drops, consolidates and modifies them as needed. This year 11 categories are new or modified from last year's report card.

Voting for the vendors can be just as dynamic. While some product categories saw repeat winners from last year, other categories saw new winners rise to the top and knock last year's champs from their perch.

Who's hot and who's not, according to the channel? Read on to find out…

Business Analytics: Microsoft

Channel Chief: Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Partner Group

With its business analytics software portfolio, including Power BI and the analytical capabilities built into its SQL Server database, Microsoft has becom a major player in the competitive market for business analytics software. This year, for the third year in a row, Microsoft topped the Annual Report Card in this product category.

Microsoft won with an overall score of 69.3, coming out ahead of rival Oracle and its overall score of 64.0. Microsoft's win was impressive: It outscored Oracle in average scores for product innovation, support and partnership and in every subcategory except revenue and profit potential, where Oracle won by four points.

But Microsoft shouldn't get too cocky. While it has won every year for three years in this category, its overall score has declined each year. In fact, the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor saw its score fall in all but three of the 17 subcategories.

Collaboration: Cisco

Channel Chief: Wendy Bahr, Senior Vice President, Global Partner Organization

Cisco took home the win in this product category for the second year in a row after ousting Microsoft in 2015 for the top spot.

Cisco won with an impressive overall score of 79.9, outpacing competitors IBM (72.1), Polycom (70.2) and Microsoft (69.4).

Solution providers graded Cisco higher this year in 10 out of 17 subcategories, including giving the vendor it’s best rating – 95.5 – in the product quality and reliability subcategory. That, combined with a score of 90.1 for the richness of its product features and functionality, raised Cisco’s average Product Innovation score to an enviable 89.1.

Converged/Hyper Converged Infrastructure: Simplivity

Channel Chief: George Hope, Vice President, Global Channels

Newcomer Simplivity made an impressive debut in the Annual Report Card this year, ousting Dell - last year’s winner - in this hot technology category. Simplivity earned itself an overall grade of 81.6 to Dell’s 69.4.

Simplivity was strongest in partner support where it scored 77.9 and outscored all competitors in every support subcategory. It also won the overall category of partnership with an average 79.8 score. But EMC won the product innovation category with an average score of 88.2.

EMC earned an overall score of 80.9 in this product category, not far behind Simplivity, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise earned an overall score of 76.0 and Cisco scored 75.1.

CRM and SFA Application Software: SugarCRM

Channel Chief: Clint Oram, CTO and Co-Founder

SugarCRM was the winner in this product category with an overall score of 64.6.

The application vendor received its highest scores from partners in product innovation where it received an average score of 72.7 – including an impressive 82.8 for product compatibility and ease of integration.

SugarCRM earned an average score of 56.6 in the support and an average score of 63.3 in partnership.

Data & Information Management: Microsoft

Channel Chief: Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Partner Group

Microsoft took the win as the highest rated vendor for data and information management with an overall score of 70.6, knocking off Oracle, which won the category in 2015, with its 59.8 overall score this year.

Microsoft swept the categories and subcategories in this product category for the win. The company scored 78.0 for product innovation – boosted by a grade of 86.3 for product quality and reliability. It's average for support was 65.7 and for partnership was 67.3.

Data Protection Software: EMC

Channel Chief: Gregg Ambulos, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Sales, Operations

EMC, one of the big winners in this year's Annual Report Card voting, was the overall winner in this product category this year, continuing a streak that goes back to 2013.

EMC had an overall score of 83.3, just below last year's 83.5 and the same as the 83.3 score in 2014. EMC's competition this year was IBM with an overall score of 78.7 and Carbonite with an overall score of 75.6.

EMC swept product innovation criteria (average score 89.5) – scoring above 90 in three subcategories including an astounding 98.7 in product quality and reliability. It also swept the support criteria (average score 78.2), and won every partnership subcategory except managing channel conflict (bested by IBM there, 79.9 to 79.7).

Data Security: Sophos

Channel Chief: Kendra Krause, Vice President, Global Channels

Data Security is an increasingly hot topic in the IT world and an increasingly important technology for the channel. Here partners named Sophos the winner with an impressive 90.6 overall score compared to Symantec’s overall score of 84.0.

In fact, although Symantec was graded above 90 in three subcategories, Sophos bested the runner-up in every subcategory and was given an eye-popping grade of 102.8 in product quality and reliability, and a grade of 101.1 in richness of product features and functionality.

Desktop & Server Virtualization: VMware

Channel Chief: Frank Rauch, Vice President, Americas Partner Organization

VMware, which won in this highly competitive product category in 2015, kept its top spot in desktop and server virtualization this year with an overall score of 71.4, beating rivals Microsoft (overall score 66.1) and Citrix (overall score 60.1).

VMware dominated the product innovation (81.9 average score) and support (66.7 average score) criteria. While it also won in most partnership criteria, it was bested by Microsoft in revenue and profit potential (74.0 for Microsoft to VMware's 67.1) and in ease of doing business (67.3 for Microsoft versus VMware's 66.9).

VMware should take note, however, that its overall score this year, while good enough to win, was down more than 12 points from the 83.5 overall score it earned last year.

Endpoint Security: Kaspersky Lab

Channel Chief: Leslie Bois, Vice President, Channel Sales

Endpoint security is another highly competitive technology category and Kaspersky Lab came out on top in the Annual Report Card voting with an overall grade of 90.9 from solution providers.

This product category had some of the closest voting with Kaspersky barely edging out Sophos – the latter's overall grade of 90.6 was just three-tenths of a point behind Kaspersky. They were followed by Cisco with an overall score of 77.2, RSA (64.0) and Symantec (62.1).

Kaspersky and Sophos were also close in many of the subcategories, with Kaspersky besting Sophos in only 11 of the 17 criteria subcategories. Sophos even outscored Kaspersky in product innovation with an average grade of 95.4 to Kaspersky's 94.1.

Enterprise Network Storage: EMC

Channel Chief: Gregg Ambulos, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Sales, Operations

EMC, which won this product category in 2013 and 2014, lost the top spot to IBM by seven-tenths of a point last year. This year EMC made a comeback, besting IBM by more than 6 points with an overall score of 86.1 and a top grade in every criteria category and subcategory.

IBM earned an overall grade of 80.0 for this product category, followed by Dell (73.5), NetApp (70.3), Lenovo (69.3) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (66.8).

EMC received scores above 90 in five criteria subcategories – four in product innovation (including a whopping 101.5 in product quality and reliability) that pushed its average score there to 91.7.

Enterprise Networking Infrastructure: Cisco

Channel Chief: Wendy Bahr, Senior Vice President, Global Partner Organization

Cisco came out on top in this product category this year – as it has every year for some time. But the company's 80.2 overall score wasn't that far ahead of rival Juniper Networks (78.5), while Dell achieved an overall score of 68.5

Cisco outscored its competitors in 14 of the ARC’s 17 subcategories, getting the highest average grades in support and in product innovation (including a 96.1 in product quality and reliability and a 90.0 in richness of product features and functionality).

Juniper, however, bested Cisco in the partnership criteria by half a point with an average score of 77.5 to Cisco's 77.0.

Enterprise Wireless LANs: Cisco

Channel Chief: Wendy Bahr, Senior Vice President, Global Partner Organization

Cisco also took home the top spot in a tight race in this product category, receiving an overall score of 82.5, only half a point higher than Ruckus Wireless’ score of 82.0 and a little more than 2 points away from Fortinet’s 79.9.

All-in-all, this category was highly contested, with Cisco winning in only nine of the 17 subcategories and in the support category with an average score of 77.3. Ruckus Wireless outscored the competition in product innovation (including an impressive 101.7 score for product quality and reliability) with an average score of 90.7, while Fortinet came out ahead in partnership with an average score of 79.7.

Managed Services: Connectwise

Channel Chief: CEO Arnie Bellini

Connectwise won this product category for the second year with a score of 74.5, only 1.1 points ahead of runner-up SolarWinds N-able and its 73.4 overall score. Labtech was third with an overall score of 61.2.

Connectwise was the top dog in both product innovation and support criteria with average scores of 81.8 and 68.3, respectively. But SolarWinds N-able won several criteria, including marketing resources and richness of product features and functionality. And it won the financial subcategory (which substituted for the partnership subcategory in this product category) with an average score of 74.2.

Multifunction Printers: Xerox

Channel Chief: John Corley, President, Channel Partner Operations

Multifunction printers have been a major area of competition for the printer industry this year with nearly every vendor releasing a new line of MFPs within the last 12 months.

Xerox took the top spot in this year's Annual Report Card, as it has every year since 2013, beating runner-up Samsung with an overall grade of 69.2 to 67.9. HP Inc. was right behind with an overall score of 66.9.

In 2014 and 2015 Xerox outscored its rivals in every criteria subcategory. This year HP Inc. came out on top in several subcategories, including the all-important product quality and reliability and in managing channel conflict, while Samsung scored higher in product technical innovation and in quality of field management.

Still, Xerox's average grades were good enough for it to win in overall product innovation (73.1), support (66.2) and partnership (67.8).

Network Connectivity: Comcast

Channel Chief: Craig Schlagbaum, Vice President, Indirect Channels

Comcast was given an overall grade of 56.6 in the network connectivity category, improving its grade from 2015 when it was rated an overall score of 51.2.

The cable and communications giant received its highest score, 71.1, for its product’s quality and reliability. That boosted its product innovation average – its strongest category - to 59.2.

Comcast also received a solid performance grade for support (average 54.5), including scoring 61.3 for its post-sales support and 60.0 for the quality of its field management.

Network Security: Sophos

Channel Chief: Kendra Krause, Vice President Global Channels

Sophos made a clean sweep in the partner scoring in this crowded product category. Sophos won with an overall grade of 92.2, besting Fortinet’s score of 85.0, Dell SonicWALL’s 80.2, Cisco's 78.0, Juniper Networks' 75.7 and RSA's 67.8

Even more impressive was the fact that Sophos won every subcategory with not a single score under 81, many scores in the 90s and three scores over 100 (all in the product innovation criteria).

Sophos racked up average scores of 96.5 in product innovation, 88.7 in support and 90.7 in partnership.

Notebooks/Mobile Computers: Lenovo

Channel Chief: Sammy Kinlaw, North America Channel Chief

The scoring was close in this competitive product category with Lenovo coming out on top with an overall grade of 72.2. Dell came in second with an overall score of 71.8. HP Inc., which inherited this product line after last year's Hewlett-Packard split and won this category in 2014 and 2015, had an overall score of 69.9.

The voting was close. Lenovo outscored competitors in only eight of the 17 subcategories and actually scored behind Dell and HP Inc. in product innovation with an average score of 78.9 compared to the 80.1 earned by both Dell and HP Inc.

Lenovo’s strongest performance was in partnership criteria where its average score was 72.0, thanks to high scores in several criteria subcategories, including 82.2 in revenue and profit potential and 82.9 in ease of doing business.

Power Protection and Management: Eaton

Channel Chief: Curtiz Gangi, Vice President, IT Channel Sales and Marketing, Americas

Eaton beat Tripp Lite and APC by Schneider with a clean sweep of every criteria subcategory to earn a solid overall grade of 81.2. Eaton scored 83.7 in product innovation, 78.2 in support and 81.3 in partnership.

With a rating of over 90 in both product quality/reliability and revenue/profit potential criteria, Eaton won the hearts and top scores of the solution provider community.

Security Management: RSA

Channel Chief: Todd Chronert, Vice President of Channel Sales

RSA won this product category in a tight battle with IBM with an overall score of 71.7, just 1.1 points higher than IBM’s overall score of 70.6.

The competition was close with RSA scoring higher in nine criteria subcategories and IBM taking seven - the two earned the same score (61.3) for their partner portals.

In the end, however, RSA won both the support and partnership criteria with average scores of 67.3 and 68.7 respectively. IBM was the top scorer in product innovation with an average score of 79.9.

Servers: HPE

Channel Chief: Scott Dunsire, Vice President, General Manager, Americas Channels, OEM, Inside Sales

Coming off its creation last year through the split of the old Hewlett-Packard into two companies, this was a big win for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. HPE took first place in the server product category with an overall score of 76.1, beating runner-up IBM and its overall score of 71.9. Dell was third with an overall score of 67.9, followed by Lenovo's 59.0

HPE had the highest average product innovation score (83.4), thanks, in part, to top grades in product compatibility and ease of integration (84.4) and marketability (78.8). But IBM edged out HPE in product quality and reliability, 96.0 to 95.9.

HPE also recorded top average scores for support (69.6) and partnership (74.2).

SMB External Storage Hardware: EMC

Channel Chief: Gregg Ambulos, Senior Vice President, Global Channel Sales, Operations

EMC racked up another product category win in this year's Annual Report Card with an overall score of 84.0 here. That was good enough to surpass rivals Datto and its overall score of 81.9, Buffalo Technology’s 74.7 and Dell's 71.7.

EMC won in both the product innovation and support criteria with average scores of 88.9 and 80.0, respectively. The company, in fact, pulled in scores above 90 in product quality/reliability, richness of product features/functionality, technical innovation, and product compatibility and ease of integration.

But Datto bested EMC in the partnership average score by 0.2 points, 82.5 to 82.3.

SMB Networking: Ruckus Wireless

Channel Chief: Sandra Glaser Cheek, Vice President, Worldwide Partner Sales

Ruckus Wireless was the big winner in the SMB networking product category, receiving an overall grade of 82.1 – a comfortable lead over competitors D-Link Systems (overall score 77.3), Dell (77.2) and Cisco (76.0).

Ruckus’ highest grade was 100.1, a score it won in the product quality and reliability subcategory. That boosted its average score in the product innovation criteria to a winning 88.8. The vendor also took top marks in support and partnership criteria with average scores of 76.6 and 79.8, respectively.

Ruckus did not take all of the criteria subcategories, however, losing to D-Link in pre-sales support (79.4 to 78.2) and in partner communication (79.6 to 76.5).

Tablets: Samsung

Channel Chief: Greg Taylor, Vice President, Sales Business Division

Samsung, competing in the tablet product category for the first time, was the top scorer with an overall grade of 72.9. Runners up were Lenovo with an overall score of 71.6, Dell (69.0) and HP Inc. (67.5).

Samsung and Lenovo battled it out across the main and subcategory criteria. Samsung won in 12 subcategories to Lenovo's five. Samsung, for example, won in most of the product innovation criteria, but was outscored by Lenovo in the all-important product quality and reliability (85.4 to 83.1). And Lenovo took top scores in both pre- and post-sales support.

Samsung, nevertheless, had the highest average scores across all three criteria categories: 78.0 in product innovation, 67.4 in support and 72.4 in partnership.

Web and Application Security: Fortinet

Channel Chief: Joe Sykora, Vice President, Americas Channels, Enhanced Technologies

Cisco has had its eyes on expanding its presence in security technology markets. But it ran up against a security veteran in the web and application security product category in this year's Annual Report Card voting. Fortinet not only won with the highest overall score (84.2 to Cisco's 77.2), but swept every criteria category and subcategory as well.

Fortinet won in product innovation with an average score of 88.4, in support (79.3) and partnership (84.1). The company was rated an impressive 94.4 in product quality and reliability, and 93.7 in the revenue and profit potential subcategory.

Workgroup Color Printers: Samsung

Channel Chief: Greg Taylor, Vice Presidnt, Sales Business Division

As in the tablet computers product category, Samsung was competing in workgroup color printers for the first time. And as with tablets, the company made its presence felt.

With an overall score of 69.2, Samsung ousted long-time winner Xerox, which had been awarded the top spot in 2013, 2014 and 2015. This year Xerox recorded an overall score of 68.1, just over one point behind Samsung. HP Inc. wasn't far behind with an overall score of 66.2.

In fact, the competition was close through most of the subcategories, with Samsung winning in nine of the 17 criteria subcategories, Xerox winning in six and HP Inc. in two. In some cases just a couple of points separated the vendors' scores.

In the end, however, Samsung bested Xerox in two of the three criteria groups, winning in product innovation with an average score of 74.2 to Xerox's 72.2, and partnership with an average score of 67.7 to Xerox's 66.7. The two tied in support criteria with average scores of 64.9