The Best Of The Best

Our 2021 Products of the Year awards honor the leading partner-friendly products that launched over the past year—as chosen by the solution providers who are on the front lines of bringing these products to customers. To get things started, our editors selected product finalists in 30 technology categories among offerings that were launched or updated from September 2020 to September 2021. The categories ranged from AI and big data solutions, to cloud and collaboration platforms, to security, storage and devices. We then asked solution provider partners to choose winners based on how the products rate on technology, revenue and profit opportunities, and customer need.

The survey received more than 5,000 product ratings from solution providers, and the product receiving the highest overall score in each category was named the winner. Notably, five companies took home multiple top prizes in this year’s contest: HPE Aruba, Cisco and Microsoft had three category wins each, while HP Inc. and IBM each had two category wins.

What follows are the winners and finalists in CRN’s Products of the Year awards for 2021.