What a fantastic evening! The industry’s best of the best in the Canadian Channel gathered at the fabulous Eglinton Grand in Toronto to celebrate their award wins at the 12th Annual Reseller Choice Awards and Canada’s 50 Best Managed IT Companies awards!
This year was exceptional as we literally went over the venue’s capacity. We apologize to those who could not get a ticket to attend or just showed up. My event team is already planning next year’s event to be at least 50% larger! Please mark your calendar for February 6th, 2020. Book your tickets as soon as registration opens to reserve your seat. Subscribe or visit to www.channelnext.ca to ensure you receive announcements.
For 12 years, the Canadian channel partners have been voting for their favorite vendors and distributors in over 70 categories. To reflect the changing needs of the channel, every year we remove some categories and add a few like the Top 10 Cloud Vendors and Women-in-Tech awards. We also handed out three 10-Time Consecutive Award Winners that went to Microsoft, HP and Lenovo this year. Tech Data was the first to win 2 years ago. A few more are up for this year if they hold on to their #1 spot.
This is the largest such channel survey in Canada. VARs, MSPs, ITSPs, and MSSPs want their voices to be heard loud and clear. We had over 600 nominees this year! To win a Reseller Choice Award, the nominee simply had to get the most votes. There were no subjective or third party influences on the results. Resellers could nominate their favorite company in any of the categories. Once nominated, the channel could immediately vote for them. Resellers could vote in every one of the 71 categories, but were not obligated to do all. They could vote in just one category, if they choose.
We thank everyone for voting! Without your votes, the channel’s voice would not be heard!
Here are the winners of the special thank-you for voting gifts (randomly selected from those who voted).
In 2018, we saw a dramatic increase in nominations and voting in the Cloud categories as well as for recurring revenue solution vendors. IT Security was also off the charts. Next year, we will be adding a few more categories to reflect this. The popular brands were able to hold on to most of their traditional strongholds but others are catching up. This year could be interesting to see what happens.
There is a lot to unpack in the data that would take way too much time to outline in this article, so we let’s jump ahead to recognize the winners and runner-ups for 2018.
The winners of the 2018 Reseller Choice Awards are:
Congratulations to all the winners of the 2018 Reseller Choice Awards!
This win reflects their outstanding performance in 2018. Hopefully it motivates others who did not win to do better in 2019! When the channel gets served better, everyone wins!
Top 10 Cloud Vendors are:
This was a new category for us as we start to rank the top 100 vendors. As more ISVs enter the market, we will be looking for the best of the best Cloud/SaaS vendors that sell through the channel.
Women In Tech awards:
This award went to three amazing women leaders who have done incredible things in 2018 to support more women to enter and stay in the Tech Industry. Most people understand that while women make up about half of the population, they only represent about 20% of the workforce in the tech industry.
TechnoPlanet is committed to supporting more women to enter and stay in the tech sector. Please check out and subscribe to our dedicated news column on the subject on eChannelNEWS.com. We also announced a free online assessment tool for any company to test their level of women-friendliness in their workplace. We are also offering female-led workshops to help companies to better understand and implement best practices to improve a female-friendly business environment.
Next year, we will be awarding the top 10 companies on Best Places For Women to Work in Tech. I would encourage all women currently working in the industry or thinking about entering, to consider joining an all-female peer group for mentoring, supporting and building the business skills needed to accelerate their success. See Elite300Mastermind.com to explore further.
Please keep an eye on what we are doing here and join this important mission. Connect with Gerlinda Ringe, our Global events Manager and Marie Wiese, President of Marketing Co-Pilot who are heading the “WiT” mission.
Click here to check out the 50 Best Award Winners
Again, congratulations to all of the 2018 Winners! It was an honour and absolute pleasure to meet and host everyone at the awards gala. It was truly a fun experience and we look forward to next year!
Last, but not least, we also thank all of our sponsors for supporting this important annual event! Sponsoring does not guarantee you an award, but your unconditional support regardless if you win or not is most welcomed and it demonstrates your deep commitment and passion for the channel!
Remember to subscribe to www.e-channelnews.com to keep updated!
See you next year!
Check out the photo gallery:
