In one word, many describe 2020 as a year of shocking, grief, crazy, fear, unprecedented, frustrating, surreal, sad, challenging, worrisome, crazy and WT#. Feel free to add your own adjective…..

This year, more than ever, we were about helping our families, friends, neighbours and our channel community. No one was a stranger anymore.

We saw so many amazing people step up to the challenge to do the same in 2020 and this Reseller Choice Awards is dedicated to these courageous people who just did whatever they had to do to make it through and help others at the same time.

ESET’s Bob Bonneau with MCs Julian Lee and Paolo Del Nibletto

As such, we added three new awards this year…

Best Support During The Pandemic which went to ITCLoud (a Microsoft cloud distributor). Best Virtual Event went to Sherweb (a Microsoft cloud distributor) and Best Channel Chief went to Rob Rae of Datto. You only need to get to know these 3 winners to understand why they won this top spot. Their passion for what they do simply shines through. More articles to come on this next level of abilities.

Rob Rae – Datto

It was very interesting to see how the channel voted and ranked companies in all of the categories. The best overall vendor was also a big achievement and the top spot went to Lenovo.

Chris Fabes – Lenovo

The other big win for Best Distributor went to Ingram Micro for the first time. The first 12 years were dominated by Tech Data. Last year Synnex took over the top spot. It’s interesting to see the historic voting patterns in this category over the past decade.

Kevin Forster – Ingram Micro

If your company was nominated in any of the 68 categories, then it meant that channel partners voted for you as the best from their perspective. If your name was not on this list, well that is something that we cannot answer. If you were ranked in the top 3 finalist, you can rest assured that you did an outstanding job in the channel and it did not go unnoticed!

Well, if you won the #1 spot, then you know what it means. For all others, maybe you will step up bigger in 2021. Remember this is like an election where you need to get your voters out to vote.

Every year, we get asked  “why does the Reseller Choice Awards matter?” To us it’s obvious as it’s the only award that you can “WIN” or better yet “EARN” if your channel partners voted for you AND you got the most votes! Not sure what could be a better recognition to receive in the IT Channel, than when your customers vote for you!

We get asked a lot “did we win?”. The final announcements are only made at the awards gala. Over 80% of the finalists attend and the winners get the big channel recognition as well as a chance to thank those who voted for them. Noting says you are doing a great job better than votes from your customers.

So, there were 637 vendors and distributors nominated in the 2020 Reseller Choice Awards. 68 categories were up for awards. Canadian channel partners voted between November 1st 2020 to January 15th 2021. Over these 2.5 months, we constantly invited our eChannelNEWS and ChannelNEXT Canadian communities of channel partners (over 8,000 VARs, MSPs, ITSPs and MSSPs) to vote at www.choiceawards.ca. The companies with the most votes won.

This year was the first virtual event of the Canadian Awards Gala. It ran just over 3.5 hours on Feb 4. It went much longer than expected. Winners had many great things to say. This time matters for people who did their very best and to set the example for others to follow. We congratulate and honour them.

This time we also “live streamed” the event on YouTube, FaceBook and LinkedIn. It was a test of things to come as we will be live-streaming most of what we do in 2021. A new-normal for us.

Now labelled as an essential service, IT companies were responsible for keeping everyone connected, working remotely and ensuring vital health systems as well as all governmental organizations to be up and running! Can you imagine the outcome of this pandemic without technology to keep us connected?

The winners for the 2020 Reseller Choice Awards are:

If there was one vendor who dominated the awards, it would be Microsoft. They won in just about every category they play in. Microsoft played a monumental role for so many during the pandemic.

Best Of Category Name First Place Second Place Third Place
Best AI Application Google
Scale AI Cognitive Scale
Best Anti-Spam ESET Microsoft BitDefender
Best Anti-Virus ESET BitDefender Sophos
Best Big Data Solution Microsoft IBM DellEMC
Best Broad-Based Distributor Ingram Micro
Synnex Tech-Data
Best Business Notebook Lenovo
HP Dell
Best Business Printer HP Lexmark Xerox
Best Business Projector Epson InFocus NEC/BenQ
Best Business Router Cisco Fortinet Sonicwall
Best Business Workstation Lenovo HP Dell
Best Channel Chief Rob Rae – Datto
Greg Salter – Zebra Andrew Sage – Cisco
Best Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery Datto Veeam ITCloud.ca
Best Cloud Platform Microsoft ITCloud.ca Sherweb
Best Cloud Storage Microsoft AWS Dropbox
Best Cloud/SaaS Distributor ITCloud.ca Ingram Micro Sherweb
Best Collaboration Tool Microsoft
Datto RingCentral
Best Computer Display HP ViewSonic Samsung
Best Consumer Notebook Lenovo HP Dell
Best CRM Microsoft ConnectWise Datto
Best Customer Service (Distributor) ITCloud.ca Bluestar Ingram Micro
Best Data Centre Microsoft Q9 – Bell F12 Networks
Best Digital Document Management Microsoft
Adobe Open Text
Best Emerging Vendor Zerto Digital River Backup Assist/Commvault
Best Endpoint Security ESET BitDefender SentinelOne
Best ERP Microsoft Sage SAP
Best Financial Software Intuit Sage Microsoft
Best Firewall Fortinet WatchGuard Cisco
Best Gaming Desktop Asus Dell Lenovo
Best Interactive Digital Display ViewSonic HP Samsung
Best IoT Solution Cisco Microsoft Intel
Best IT Assessment Tool Auvik Networks
Kaseya WatchGuard
Best Label Printer Zebra Dymo Brother
Best Mesh Wifi System Ubiquiti Networks
Cisco Asus
Best Mobile Device Management Microsoft SOTI Cisco/Sophos
Best Mobile Scanner PFU (Fujitsu) Epson Honeywell
Best Multi-Function Printer HP Lexmark Brother
Best NAS QNAP Synology Buffalo Technology
Best Network Operation Centre (NOC) ConnectWise
ServiceNow Solarwinds
Best Online Channel News Media E-Channelnews CDN IT in Canada
Best Overall Vendor Lenovo Zebra ESET/Datto
Best Password Management Lastpass by LogMeIn
IT Glue 1Password
Best Portable Projector Epson
ViewSonic InFocus
Best Portable Storage WD Seagate Samsung
Best POS Vendor Lenovo HP ELO
Best Print Managed Services Xerox
HP Lexmark
Best Product Support (Distributor) ITCloud.ca Bluestar Ingram Micro
Best Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) Solarwinds
Datto NinjaRMM
Best Remote Work Solution Microsoft Google Splashtop
Best SAN HPE Dell Lenovo
Best Scanner PFU (Fujitsu) Canon HP
Best SD-WAN Cisco Fortinet Riverbed
Best Security Operation Centre (SOC) WatchGuard Palo Alto Networks Arctic Wolf
Best Security Vendor BitDefender Fortinet ESET
Best Server Dell Lenovo HPE
Best Service Automation (PSA) ConnectWise Datto Solarwinds
Best SMB/Enterprise Network Switch Cisco HPE Ubiquiti Networks
Best SOHO Router Cisco Sonicwall Ubiquiti Networks
Best Specialty Distributor (Non-Cloud) Bluestar D&H GB Micro
Best Tablet Apple Microsoft Samsung
Best Telephony (VOIP) Cisco
Microsoft RingCentral
Best UPS Battery Backup Schneider Eaton Tripp Lite
Best Vendor Channel Program Lenovo Zebra Datto
Best Vendor Support During Pandemic ITCloud.ca
Lenovo HP/Dell
Best Virtual Event Sherweb ITCloud.ca Scansource
Best Virtualization Software VMWare   Microsoft Citrix

Congratulations to all the winners of the 2020 Reseller Choice Awards!

Top 10 Cloud Vendors were:

Microsoft, VMware, Datto
1. Microsoft
2. Datto
3. VMware
4. AWS
5. Google
6. Barracuda
7. ITCloud.ca
8. Sherweb
9. HPE
10. RingCentral

 

Jodi Bonham – Eaton

Women In Tech awards:

Jodi Bonham – Eaton
Lesley English – OCR

JoAnne Hardy – WBM

To win the cash prizes, the voters had to include their contact information when voting. To win the grand prize, the recipient had to have been live at the end of the award ceremony.

The winners of the “thank you for voting” cash prize draws of $200 each were:

Elyse Martel – Micro-Logic
Rick Taylor – PC Protex
Jason Teresko – Northern Nerds
Stéphane Trépanier – Hector Solutions
Allan White – Cassandra Management Systems

Note: Jason Teresko will be paying it forward as he will be giving this prize to a customer who recently was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

The winner of the $500 cash grand prize was Mat Berube of Leadwave.

Adam Crowe – Leadwave

A special thanks to all our sponsors….

 

Again, congratulations to all of the 2020 Winners! The next awards gala will be on February 3rd, 2022 (save the date).

Remember to subscribe to www.e-channelnews.com to keep updated!