CRN Unveils Winners of The Eleventh Annual Channel Champions Awards; Awards Recognize Vendors In 20 Key Product and Service Categories

PRNewswire
MANHASSET, N.Y.
Mar 19, 2002

Today, CMP Media's CRN, the newsweekly for builders of technology, announced the eleventh annual Channel Champions winners. Channel Champion winners were awarded at a ceremony on Thursday, March 14 at CMP's Solution Provider XChange event in New Orleans.

Channel Champions Methodology

The Channel Champions survey is the largest and broadest-based solution provider market study in the industry. Over 7,500 phone interviews were completed between November 2001 and January 2002, representing more than 2,200 unique solution providers. Vendors that were rated in each category were chosen on the basis of market share data provided by major research firms. In the case where market share data was not available, vendors were chosen by CRN senior editorial staff recommendations.

Solution providers were asked to specify the strength of their business relationship with the vendors and products in the category. The relationships were categorized in three ways -- key strategic partner, major partner, or minor partner. CRN limited solution providers to rate only those vendors with whom they had either a strategic or a major partner type of business relationship, when possible.

   Solution providers rated the vendors based on the following:

   *  Technical or product factors such as product quality and reliability,
      product scalability, and ease of management
   *  Channel factors such as technical support, marketing support, and
      overall return on investment

Throughout the survey solution providers were asked to rate the relative importance of the individual evaluation criteria. To derive the overall score for each vendor, the raw satisfaction scores were weighted according to the relative importance of the evaluation criteria.

The Channel Champions study was designed to measure overall solution provider perceptions of vendor products and services. The result is a premier resource used by solution providers throughout the industry to evaluate vendors and their programs. The survey rated vendors in 20 key product and service categories.

   The Channel Champions winners are as follows:

   *  Antivirus Software -- Symantec
   *  Data Services -- Worldcom
   *  Databases  -- Microsoft and Oracle (tie)
   *  Enterprise Network Attached Storage -- EMC
   *  Firewalls -- Symantec
   *  Four-Way Wintel-Based Servers -- Compaq
   *  Intrusion Detection -- Cisco
   *  Java Application Servers -- IBM
   *  Microprocessors  -- AMD
   *  Monitors -- Viewsonic
   *  Motherboards -- Intel
   *  Network Color Laser Printers -- HP
   *  Network Hardware -- Cisco
   *  Network Management Software -- HP
   *  Network Operating Systems -- Red Hat
   *  Notebooks -- IBM
   *  Rack mounted UPSes -- APC
   *  Storage Area Network Arrays -- HP
   *  Unix-based Midrange Servers -- Sun
   *  Wireless LANs -- Cisco

"We would like to extend a very sincere congratulations to this year's Channel Champions. These companies exemplify the top companies, products, and services Service Providers will recommend to their customers," said Charles Humphrey, Vice President/Publishing Director, CRN. "We are excited that through our awards programs and our magazine's top-notch editorial we provide CRN readers with the information they need to recommend the most technology purchases for businesses of every size, in every market."

Channel Champs Sponsors

CRN's eleventh annual Channel Champions Awards is generously supported by industry sponsors. Gold sponsors include: Hewlett Packard, Symantec, and Viewsonic. Silver sponsors include: AMD, Compaq, Qwest, Sun Microsystems and Synnex.

About CRN

CRN is the nation's leading trade newsweekly that provides timely industry news and analysis for solution providers, integrators and e-businesses building technology solutions. It is the most trusted source of news for 117,500 channel professionals. A media leader in the high-tech industry, CRN provides the most comprehensive suite of online resources: http://www.crn.com/, the site where industry news breaks first; CRN Direct, a daily newsletter that brings personalized news to solution providers' desktops; and CRN News Radio, a daily news broadcast covering the solution provider channel and the industry.

About CMP Media LLC

CMP Media LLC (http://www.cmp.com/) is a leading high-tech media company providing essential information and marketing services to the entire technology spectrum-the builders, sellers and users of technology worldwide. Capitalizing on its editorial strength, CMP is uniquely positioned to offer marketers comprehensive, integrated media solutions tailored to meet their individual needs. Its diverse products and services include newspapers, magazines, Internet products, research, direct marketing services, education and training, trade shows and conferences, custom publishing, testing and consulting.

   Contact:  Ramona Castaldo
             Marketing Manager
             CRN
             516-562-7219
             rcastald@cmp.com

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SOURCE: CRN

Contact: Ramona Castaldo, Marketing Manager of CRN, +1-516-562-7219,
rcastald@cmp.com

Website: http://www.cmp.com/

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