Spotlight On VAR Ingenuity: The Annual Channel Innovator Awards

The editorial staff at Business Solutions has been very busy speaking with VARs since last year’s inaugural Channel Innovator Awards. The multitude of solutions we see in a year and the benefits that the end users receive from implementations are colossal, so narrowing down the list to just a few winners is a lengthy process. Selecting the best representative VAR for each category becomes challenging when resellers either provide multiple technology solutions or provide entire IT systems and services. The awards highlight the most revolutionary VAR solutions in each of six categories: data collection, wireless, point of sale, content management, networking/convergence, and storage/retrieval. Nominations were submitted by the innovators’ channel partners and, in some cases, the VARs themselves. The Business Solutions editorial staff reviewed the nominations and selected the winners based on their success.

We’re honoring six VARs that have demonstrated inventiveness and business acumen in their respective technologies. These distinguished resellers and integrators have designed and implemented specific technology offerings to address their customers’ multifaceted business problems. By sharing their stories with our readers, we hope to help you find answers for comparable issues you and your customers are facing. In the ensuing pages, you can learn more about each Channel Innovator and see what earned it the distinction in 2006.

Crossing Technologies For Sales Growth
Combining multiple technologies in a solution allows a VAR to increase income, expand its expertise, and win new customers. We paid extra attention to applicants for the Channel Innovator Awards that showed the ability to integrate complementary technologies into a total solution, since this is a significant element in Business Solutions’ mission statement. Crossing technologies includes, for example, combining a POS system with a wireless network, integrating a storage solution with a document management component, or developing a computing infrastructure that includes networking and security functions. The guide listings beginning on page 11 point to vendors that can help you gain the knowledge needed to integrate new technologies into your solution portfolio.

VARs Grow With Advanced Technology, Imagination
In the next few pages, you’ll see six examples of our readers’ ingenuity, including VAR Open Systems Technologies (OST), victor in the storage/retrieval category. OST grew 94% in one year by offering storage consulting services – rather than simply sales. By helping its customers optimize their existing storage infrastructure, this VAR increased its credibility and its sales. OST’s consulting practices include multiple storage disciplines, including complex SAN (storage area network) design, infrastructure rationalization, consolidation, and many others. Each of these business segments is run as a separate business unit within OST.

Net Direct Systems (NDS) won the networking/convergence innovator distinction by developing a mobile server solution that mounts to a Humvee or other military vehicle. This integrator customized HP’s blade server appliance, allowing it to endure 30-degree hotter temperatures and reducing the field failure rate to 2% from the normal 78%. NDS anticipates $100 million growth in the next 18 months with this and other solutions. These are examples of only a couple of the technology category winners, with the others revealing similarly compelling tales.

Our readers are implementing new and creative solutions every day, and you have the ability to gain knowledge from their experience. These are the stories we cover each month in Business Solutions magazine, and we hope you enjoy celebrating the success of the channel partners with us this month. I can’t wait to see the projects and solutions you have to tell us about for the 2007 Channel Innovator Awards.