The Best Of The Best: CRN's 2018 Annual Report Card Awards

And The Award Goes To…

Some 280 solution providers from across the country gathered in San Antonio, Tex., to celebrate the 24 winners of the 33rd consecutive CRN Annual Report Card awards.

Thousands of solution providers cast their votes for the ARC awards, scoring vendors in the categories of partnership, support, product innovation, and managed and cloud services. The winners were recognized at an awards ceremony on Aug. 21 at XChange 2018.

Read on to find out which vendors were voted the best of the best by solution providers.

For a detailed wrap up of the complete Annual Report Card scores, see 2018 Annual Report Card Winners: Solution Providers Give Top Marks To Key Vendors.

APC

The most sophisticated IT systems can't help a business when they go down due to a power failure or other disaster. To keep their customers up and running, solution providers work closely with companies that develop key power protection and management technology.

Winning this year's award for Product Innovation in the Power Protection and Management category is APC, which received a score of 90.6.

Katie Boeh, APC Director of Channel Marketing and Communications, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Aruba, A Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company

Networks are the backbone of corporate IT, tying together all IT resources and handling ever-greater volumes of data and communications traffic. That means that suppliers of network systems are playing an ever-more critical role in today's IT infrastructure industry.

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, was one of the biggest winners in this year's ARC, sweeping the Enterprise Networking Infrastructure (83.0 overall score) and Enterprise Wireless LANs (86.6 overall score) categories, and winning top scores in product innovation, support and partnership and winning best overall score (85.5) in SMB Networking.

Donna Grothjan, Aruba Vice President of Worldwide Channels, accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Buffalo Technology

Keeping data safe and secure is a key need that businesses are asking their solution providers to meet these days. And that's driving the demand for external data storage technologies.

Buffalo Technology is this year's winner in SMB External Storage Hardware, sweeping the category and garnering an overall score of 89.9. The company's scores for Support (90.0) and Partnership (95.5) were the highest across all technology categories.

Daisuke Maki, CEO of Buffalo Americas, accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Cisco

Collaboration software has emerged as a critical technology area in recent years, helping employees work together – whether sitting side by side or around the world – and making them more productive.

Cisco outscored the competition in this category in Product Innovation with a score of 90.6.

David Stearns, Americas Collaboration Director, Americas Partner Organization, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Comcast Business

Comcast Business was this year's winner in the all-important category of Network Connectivity, winning in all subcategories and scoring 74.1 overall.

Dalyn Wertz (left), Executive Director, Channel Management, accepted the award.

Datto

With data becoming ever-more valuable, technology for protecting that data is in high demand, making the Data Protection Software technology category all the more important.

Datto scored highest in Product Innovation and Support and received the highest overall grade (89.3) in this technology category. The company also scored highest (77.4) in Managed and Cloud Services in the SMB Networking technology category.

Eric Torres, Channel Development Manager, accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Dell

Dell Technologies was one of the big winners in this year's ARC scoring. The company swept the Notebooks and Mobile Computing technology category, including an overall score of 85.9, and scored highest (78.9) in Product Innovation in the Tablets technology category.

Dell EMC, meanwhile, was the overall high scorer (83.9) in the fast growing Converged/Hyperconverged Infrastructure Systems technology category, where it also scored highest in Product Innovation and Support. Dell EMC also outscored the competition in Support (81.6) in Industry Standard Servers.

Mary Catherine Wilson, Senior Director of Global Channel Marketing accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Eaton

Eaton came out on top in the highly competitive Power Protection and Management category, winning top scores in Product Innovation, Support, and Managed and Cloud Services, as well as capturing the top overall score (87.1).

Curtiz Gangi, Vice President of North America Mid-Market Sales, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Fortinet

Security has been one of the most dynamic – and most competitive – categories in the IT industry and that was reflected in this year's ARC voting. So it's a testament to Fortinet that the company scored well across two security technology categories.

Fortinet swept the Security Management technology category, including coming out of top with an overall score of 85.9. In Web Application Security Fortinet scored highest in Product Innovation, Support and Partnership, and won the category with an overall score of 86.8.

Jon Bove, Vice President of Americas Channels, (second from right) and his team accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

It's no surprise that Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of the most important companies in IT infrastructure and in the IT channel, would be a winner in multiple categories.

HPE swept the Enterprise Network Storage technology category with an overall score of 83.4. In the Industry Standard Servers technology category, HPE outscored the competition in Product Innovation, Partnership, and Managed and Cloud Services, as well as garnering the highest overall score (84.0).

HPE's SimpliVity business, meanwhile, made its mark in the Converged/Hyperconverged Infrastructure Systems technology category with top scores in Partnership (84.9) and Managed and Cloud Services (77.0).

Rob Schaeffer, Vice President, U.S. Resellers, accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

HP Inc.

Personal systems and printers have always been a mainstay of the channel and HP Inc. is one of the biggest players in that arena.

HP swept the Multifunction Printers technology category, including receiving an overall score of 82.6. In the Tablets technology category HP outscored its competitors in Product Innovation, Partnership, and Managed and Cloud Services, winning the category with an overall score of 78.8. And in the Workgroup Color Printers technology category HP scored highest in Partnership (77.7).

Daniel McDonnell, Vice President of U.S. Print Channel, accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

IBM

With businesses and organizations struggling to make sense of – and derive value from – increasingly huge volumes of data, business analytics remains a hot segment of the IT industry.

IBM swept the scoring for this category, including receiving an overall score of 69.3 for the Business Analytics technology category.

Dorothy Copeland, Vice President, IBM Global Business Partners, North America, and her team member, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

IGEL

Virtualization has been a critical technology for the IT industry and for the channel in recent years. And while the market has largely been dominated by VMware, competitor IGEL made its presence known this year in the Desktop and Server Virtualization technology category by scoring highest in Support (72.6) and Partnership (78.1).

Trey Baumgardner, Regional Sales Manager, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Intel

Microprocessors remain at the heart of IT systems and Intel remains the top company here, sweeping the Processors technology category and winning with an overall score of 77.2.

Intermedia

Intermedia has been a rising star in the highly competitive Collaboration technology category and it showed this year as the company outscored other vendors in Support, Partnership, and Managed and Cloud Services, also winning the overall category with a score of 84.2.

Eric Martorano, Chief Revenue Officer, and his team accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

McAfee

Since being spun off from Intel last year McAfee has been making its presence known in the IT security arena – and in the channel. In this year's ARC judging McAfee outscored the competition in the Data Security technology category in Partnership, and in Managed and Cloud Services, and tied with rival Symantec with an overall score of 79.7.

Chari Rhoades, Director of Channel Operations and Distribution, Americas, was on hand to accept the award.

SonicWall

Email is one of the weakest links in many organizations' security operations, making email security a critical technology in any businesses' security efforts. SonicWall, another recently independent security technology company, swept the Email Security category and received an overall score of 87.4.

HoJin Kim, Vice President, North America Channel Sales, and his team member accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Sophos

Solution providers gave security software developer Sophos some of the highest grades in this year's Annual Report Card.

The company swept both the Endpoint Security and Network Security technology categories and received impressive overall scores of 91.6 and 92.3, respectively – the latter the highest overall score given to any vendor in any technology category this year.

Sophos also had the distinction of receiving the highest scores for Product Innovation (96.0 in Endpoint Security and 97.8 in Network Security) across all technology categories in this year's ARC.

Kendra Krause, Vice President of Global Channel Sales (fifth from left) accepted the awards from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

StorageCraft

In the highly competitive Data Protection Software technology category, StorageCraft outscored its rivals in Partnership (90.6) and Managed and Cloud Services (86.3).

Marvin Blough, Vice President, Worldwide Sales, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Symantec

In the all-important Data Security technology category, Symantec outscored its competitors in Product Innovation (86.6) and Support (79.3) and tied McAfee in overall score (79.7).

Keith Weatherford, Vice President, Americas Channels, was on hand to accept the award.

Tripp Lite

Solution providers gave Tripp Lite an impressive Partnership score of 93.4 in the Power Protection and Management technology category, one of the highest Partnership scores in this year's Annual Report Card.

Shane Kilfoil, Senior Vice President of International Business (second from right) and his team accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Veracode

In the Web Application Security technology category, Veracode scored highest in Managed and Cloud Services (81.2) and tied with competitor Fortinet for the high score in Partnership with an impressive 89.6.

Leslie Bois, Vice President of Global Channel & Alliances, and her team member accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

VMware

Virtualization remains one of most critical technology segments of the IT industry for the channel. And VMware remains the industry leader.

In the Desktop and Server Virtualization technology category VMware scored highest in Product Innovation and in Managed and Cloud Services, and won the category with the highest overall score (77.9).

Frank Rauch, Vice President, Americas Partner Organization, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.

Xerox

Long-time channel ally Xerox shined in the Workgroup Color Printer technology category, winning the top scores from solution providers for Product Innovation, Support, and Managed Print Services, and winning the category with an overall score of 77.5.

Amy Belcher, Vice President, Global Channel Marketing and Enablement, accepted the award from CRN Executive Editor, News, Steve Burke.