CRN Network, May 3, 2011, 1625 hrs
“It is a great feeling to receive the CRN Channel Champion award. What sets this award apart from others and lends it the credibility it deserves is the comprehensive research process that the CRN team follows. In fact the CRN Channel Champion is a great tool for IBM to gain insights into what partners think about our initiatives, policies and programs. It challenges us all the time and keeps us on our toes to continuously strive to meet the expectations of the channel community,” said Anoop Nambiar, Country Manager, Business Partner Organization, IBM at the CRN Channel Champion 2010 awards presentation ceremony, at a suburban hotel in Mumbai, on April 28. He was receiving the trophy in the server category, second year in a row.
Gaurav Burman, Director, Transactional Business, APC who won two trophies in PC UPS and commercial UPS categories echoed the sentiment.
“The CRN Channel Champions awards represent the gold standard as far as the IT channel awards are concerned. The awards have become a benchmark of channel satisfaction and provides the IT vendor community insights into what they are doing right and wrong,” said Burman.
“We use the CRN Channel Champions research as a feedback to improve our channel engagement. Last year, following the feedback we introduced several new programs and improved our marketing. This year we have got fresh insights, and our team is already working on it,” said Kailash Katkar, Managing Director, Quick Heal, which won the award in the antivirus category for the second year in a row.
The CRN Channel Champions 2010 awards ceremony was attended by the IT channel’s who’s who including the head honchos of IT companies and leading partners.
Channel chiefs and senior executives from 25 leading IT companies were present at the event to receive their Channel Champions 2010 awards from leading IT channel partners at the presentation ceremony organized at the Renaissance (Powai).
The 10 edition of CRN Channel Champions saw addition of several new product categories—thin client, business application, infrastructure management software, virtualization, and networking which was divided into enterprise networking and SMB networking—taking the count of total product categories to 25.
The IT channel polled their most-preferred vendors on channel satisfaction parameters such as product availability, price-performance, partner profitability, brand-pull and customer marketing, channel marketing and pre-sales support, channel training and certification, post-sales support and channel policy and management.
The findings of the survey were published in March 1st (commercial and enterprise categories) and March 15th, 2011 (components and consumer & SOHO product categories) issues of the CRN magazine.
Sunil Dutt, Vice President, Personal Systems Group, HP India who received three Channel Champions trophies—in the consumer mobile PC, commercial PC and thin client—product categories said, “It’s a great feeling receiving the award as it indicates that we are doing the right thing for the channel. Especially I am personally gratified receiving the consumer category. Since I took over the portfolio, there were phases from belief— to–non belief–to–belief among partners. This award is an indication that what we set out to do with our new model and policies have worked and made partners grow and be profitable.”
Neeraj Sharma, President, Imaging and Printing Group, HP India made his first appearance in front of the channel after taking over the charge at IPG, Receiving awards in both the printing categories—workgroup printers and home printers—Sharma said, “HP has always been channel focused and these awards are a testament of the fact that HP policies and programs are working for our partners.”
Sharing insights into the process and methodology of CRN Channel Champions 2010 research, Dhaval Valia, Associate Publisher and Executive Editor, CRN said, “Not only have we increased the award categories this year but also made the process more comprehensive and in-depth. Spread over two months, the Channel Champions research received votes from 1210 unique channel partners from 147 cities across 14 enterprise, commercial and SMB product categories; and 11 components, consumer and SOHO product categories. The quantitative part is followed by a rigorous qualitative interviewing done by the CRN Editorial team where we conduct 25-30 interviews with respondents per category.”
He added, “Coming out of the slowdown, partners have become very conscious about their bottomlines and are no longer going after the topline growth. They want vendors to manage MOP as it is the most critical factor that affects their business. In addition, the channel in smaller cities believes that they aren’t getting the best marketing and post sales support. They want regular and clear communication from vendors on aspects like policy change, new products, prices etc, not to mention that they want post-sales support. Vendors too need to have a clear and transparent escalation mechanism to address any of their grievances.”
The other parameters that channels want vendors to improve are: decrease the cost of their training and certification, make their policies regarding deal registration, customer account management, special pricing etc more transparent and fair. Also they want vendors to help them indentify the right opportunity areas and help them build a strong business practices around these new areas.
Channel Chiefs who received the award on their company’s behalf included Anoop Nambiar, Country Manager, Business Partner Organization, IBM; Alok Tandon, Director, Partners and Alliances, EMC; B Raghavendran, Vice President and Head, Partner Organization, Cisco India and Saarc; Gary Yang, Managing Director, D-Link; K R Naik, Chairman and Managing Director, Digilink; Anand Naik, Director, Systems Engineering, Symantec; Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu, Regional Director, India and Saarc, Check Point; Gaurav Burman, Director Transactional Business, APC; T Srinivasan, Managing Director, India and Saarc, VMware; Ram Prakash Lakshminarayan, President, Tally; Nanda Kumar, Vice President, Sales, Kaseya; Sunil Dutt, Vice President, Personal Systems Group, HP; Siddharth Jatania, National Sales Manager, Transaction Business, Acer; Neeraj Sharma, President, Imaging and Printing Group, HP; Condrad Serrao, Regional Head, West, IT Business Samsung; Kailash Katkar, Managing Director and CEO, Quick Heal; B Suryanarayanan, Director Sales and Marketing, Intel; Rohan Kadam, Manager, Corporate Marketing and PR, Asus; Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager, India and Saarc, Seagate; Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston.
Partners who presented the trophies included Champkraj Gurjar, Board of Directors, TAIT and CEO, Maxtone Electronic; Pravin Dhoka, Board of Directors, TAIT and CEO, Ortek Computers; Ketan Patel, CEO, Creative Peripheral; Devesh Aggarwal, President, ISODA and CEO, Compusoft, Rajesh Kothari, Chairman, ISODA and CEO, Bluechip Computers, Dushyant Mehta Chairman and MD, Mediaman Infotech; Cherian Thomas, Director, Wysetek Systems; Devarshi Buch, Director, Omnitech infosolutions; Anil Jagasia, Director, Savex Computers, Krishnan Jaishankar, MD, Ingram Micro, Anand Karapurkar, Director, Infobahn Technical Solutions; Kedar Shah, CEO, Nirmal Datacom, Harinder Salwan, Secretary, ISODA and MD, Tricom Multimedia; Ajay Sawant, CEO, Orient Technologies, Deepak Jadhav, CEO, VDA Infosolutions, Girish Rathod, President, TAIT and CEO, Compex Systems; Vikram Seth, CEO, Software@Work; Vinod Mulchandani, CEO, Aarvee Computers; Suresh Ramani, CEO, Techgyaan; Paresh Shah, Director, PH Teknow and Treasurer, ISODA; and Rushabh Shah, Vice President, TAIT and CEO, Graham Information Systems. |