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).

Michel Couture of CSCIO Inc.   $100 Petro-Canada gas card
Chris Dillon of Triware Technologies Inc.  Epson Workforce ET-4750 EcoTank All-in-One
Evan Oberman of BusinessCloud.ca   $100 Petro-Canada gas card

 

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:

Best Of Category Name First Place Second Place Third Place
Best 3D Printer HP
MakerBot 3D Systems
Best Anti-Spam ESET Bitdefender Barracuda
Best Anti-Virus ESET Webroot Bitdefender
Best Availability/Delivery (Distributor) Tech-Data Synnex Ingram Micro
Best Broad-Based Distributor Tech-Data Synnex Ingram Micro
Best Business Desktop Lenovo
Dell HP
Best Business Intelligence/Analytics Microsoft SAP IBM
Best Business Notebook Lenovo HP Dell
Best Business Printer HP Lexmark Brother
Best Business Projector Epson InFocus BenQ
Best Business Router Cisco Fortinet Datto
Best Distributor Channel Event Tech-Data Synnex Ingram Micro
Best (Cloud) Backup and Disaster Recovery Datto Veeam ITCloud.ca
Best Cloud Distributor ITCloud.ca Sherweb Synnex
Best Cloud Platform as a Service Microsoft AWS Red Hat
Best Cloud Storage/Solution Datto Microsoft AWS
Best Consumer Notebook Lenovo
Dell Asus
Best CRM Microsoft ConnectWise Salesforce
Best Customer Service (Distributor) ITCloud.ca Sherweb Tech-Data
Best Data Centre Microsoft Cogeco Peer 1 Q9 – Bell
Best Database Microsoft
MySQL Oracle
Best Digital Signage LG Electronics Samsung Viewsonic
Best Document Management Adobe IT Glue Digitech Systems
Best Endpoint Security ESET Sophos Bitdefender
Best Enterprise Telephony Cisco Microsoft Avaya
Best Financial Software/ERP Sage Intuit ACOMBA
Best Firewall Fortinet Cisco ESET
Best Gaming Desktop Asus Dell Lenovo
Best Home Theater Projector Epson Sony InFocus
Best Home/Consumer Router TP-LINK Asus D-Link
Best Infrastructure as a Service Microsoft Sherweb AWS
Best IoT Solution Cisco Microsoft Google
Best IT Assessment Tool RapidFire Tools
Automate Kaseya
Best Label Printer Zebra Dymo Brother
Best Messaging/Collaboration Microsoft Skype Google
Best Moblie App Microsoft
Waze Wifi Analyzer
Best Mobile Device Management Microsoft Cisco Apple – Sophos
Best Mobile Scanner Fujitsu Epson Brother
Best Multi-Function Printer HP Lexmark Brother
Best Multi-Purpose Display HP Viewsonic Lenovo
Best NAS QNAP Lenovo Datto
Best Network Switch Cisco HPE Datto – Juniper Networks
Best Networking Vendor Cisco
Datto Ubiquiti Networks – Extreme Networks
Best New Vendor ID Agent
Martello Technologies Accedian
Best Online Channel News Media E-Channelnews CDN IT in Canada
Best Overall Vendor Datto Lenovo Fujitsu
Best Password Management Passportal IT Glue LogMeIn
Best Personal Printer HP
Brother Lexmark
Best Portable Printer HP
Canon Epson
Best Portable Projector Epson BenQ InFocus
Best Portable Storage Western Digital Seagate LaCie
Best POS Vendor ELO
Lenovo Epson
Best Print Managed Services HP
Xerox Lexmark
Best Product Support (Distributor) Sherweb Tech-Data ITCloud.ca
Best Professional Display Viewsonic Dell HP
Best Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Datto Solarwinds MSP Automate
Best SAN HPE Lenovo QNAP
Best Scanner Fujitsu Canon Epson
Best Security Vendor ESET Fortinet Bitdefender
Best Server Lenovo HPE Dell
Best Service Automation (PSA) ConnectWise Datto Solarwinds MSP
Best SMB Telephony Cisco Yealink 3cx
Best Software as a Service Datto Microsoft Google
Best Specialty Distributor (Non-Cloud) Arrow Bluestar Lifeboat Distribution
Best SSD Samsung Kingston Intel
Best Storage Vendor QNAP Dell Lenovo
Best Tablet Microsoft Lenovo Apple
Best Terms/Conditions (Distributor) Tech-Data ITCloud.ca Sherweb
Best UPS Battery Backup Eaton
Schneider Tripp Lite
Best Vendor Channel Program Datto Lenovo Fujitsu
Best Virtualization Software VMWare Microsoft Veeam
Best Wide Format Printer HP
Canon Epson
Best Workstation Lenovo   HP Dell

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:

1. Microsoft
2. Google
3. AWS
4. Citrix
5. HPE
6. VMWare
7. Datto
8. Red Hat
9. Salesforce
10. Solarwinds MSP

 

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.

Mary Ann Yule
Elaine Mah
Iva Peric-Lightfoot

 

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: