TORONTO — More than 225 IT channel professionals packed the Paramount Conference and Event Venue Thursday to see IT Weapons of Brampton, Ont. walk away with six awards, include Solution Provider of the Year at CDN’s 2010 Channel Elite Awards.
(Look back at last year’s Channel Elite Awards winners in our CDN slideshow series:
CEA Solution Provider of the Year: Long View Systems
Channel Elite Awards: Part Two
Channel Elite Awards: Part Three)
IT Weapons was a strong second place finisher in several categories at last year’s awards, and company founders Ted Garner and Jason MacBean told CDN they were determined to improve this year. One of IT Weapons’ mottos is “we don’t sell products, we solve problems” and to continue to do that the company moved out of its antiquated home into a new, state-of-the-art-facility earlier this year.
The new facility is able to service a diverse range of customers from small not-for-profit organizations, to nation-wide commercial real estate firms, financial organizations, critical care organizations and even a patient transfer organization called Ornge . The solution for Ornge put a multi-billion dollar asset firm and a critical transport medical care organization under its supervision. The responsibility is overwhelming. If Ornge’s systems fail, people could die.
Another company motto is to “measure twice, cut once.” They used this approach for IRC Building Sciences Group , a Mississauga, Ontario-based structural engineering firm. They built a centralized IT system in the cloud with secure remote access that could accommodate workforce displacement in case of a disaster.
IT Weapons is still under 50 employees, but by empowering its employee base to become experts in many areas of IT and for taking the risks on cloud computing and a new facility, they were named by a panel of judges CDN’s Solution Provider of the Year.
IT Weapons along won the first ever Channel Elite Award for Best Cloud Solution, as well as the Gold award as the Best Service Organization and silver awards in Best Managed Services, Best Channel Marketing Initiative, and Best Green Solution.
But IT Weapons were not the only solution provider who had a big night. Compugen won the Gold for Best Mid-Market Solution, Best Managed Service Solution and Compugen Finance captured the Best Green Solution, which was presented at the Earth Rangers site, one of the green’s facilities in the world.
Not to be outdone, Insite Computer Group was named Best Collaborative Solution Provider with its business partner, Maxx Global. You can make the case that Insite is this year’s IT Weapons, because the company ended-up winning silver awards in the Service and Cloud categories along with a Bronze award in the Best Small Business Solution category.
It was a big night for Epic Information Solutions of Winnipeg, winning Gold in Best Enterprise Solution and for Best Channel Marketing Initiative.
Other winners include: Fortsum in the Best Small Business Solution category, Acrodex was the silver winner in Best Enterprise Solution, Jolera took the Bronze in that category. Softchoice was presented with a silver award in Best Mid-Market solution, Illumiti won a Bronze in Best Mid Market Solution, Atum won a silver award in Best Small Business Solution as well as a Bronze award in the Best Green Solution category, Achievo NetStar won the Best Service Organization Bronze award, OnX took home the Bronze in the Best Cloud Solution. Conpute , a former Solution Provider of the Year, won the Bronze in Best Managed Services, and CMS Consulting was honored with a Bronze award in the Best Channel Marketing Initiative category.
CDN congratulates all the winners and finalists for this year’s Channel Elite Awards.
Follow Paolo Del Nibletto on Twitter: @PaoloCDN.
