Walking into a hall packed with the top people from the IT channel world is not something that you witness everyday. People were solemnly seated ready for the first workshop of the day. Paolo Del Nibletto, editor of CDN welcomed the attendee’s of the workshop and introduced the first speaker to the audience. Paul Edwards serves as the Director of Infrastructure Channels research at IDC and has spent10 years at IDC in a number of key roles focused on providing partner and SMB market guidance to leading ICT firms globally.
Edwards gave a power packed workshop on the latest trends in the world of channel partnership with facts and figures. He pointed out to the graphs and data while providing recommendations for the likely business models, new business ideas and staffing needs for the near future. From time to time, attendees asked questions to executives from HP Canada, SAP Canada, Dell Canada, and Viewsonic among several others from the industry who provided deep analysis to other members of the audience about the latest techniques and product launches. Similarly, Tony Olvet who is the group vice president of research domains at IDC Canada kept the audience at the edge of their seats with his insightful workshop.
After the workshop, the CDN Top 100 Solution Providers gala was announced open and executives from more than 70 solution provider companies mingled with distributor executives and vendor executives as they awaited the start of the CDN Top 100 awards. This year, as every other year had the unexpected in store for the people. CDN editor Paolo Del Nibletto did the “Channel style”, a spoof of the Gangnam Style video from South Korean singer PSY. There was much excitement and anticipation even as the awards were being announced for the various categories. There were couple of companies who made history, like OnX which featured on the Top 5 for the first time in the history of the rankings.
Approximately 200 executives from the IT channel industry attended the event at Paramount Conference and Event Venue in North Toronto and they were in for a surprise when the No. 3 award was announced which indicated that this year would have a new company taking the No. 1 spot.
As the night progressed, Softchoice Corp. of Toronto which ranked No. 2 last year went on to claim the top spot at the show. There were several other awards given out as people cheered on and clapped the night away. If there was an award for the best IT channel event of the year, I believe CDN Top 100 Solution Providers event would grab it hands down!
You can check out the CDN Top 100 list by clicking here.
Wolston Lobo blogs about IT and is from India.