CMP Media's CRN Honors the Top Vendors at the Fourteenth Annual Channel Champions Awards CeremonyStudy Is Premier Resource to Evaluate Channel Vendors and ProgramsPRNewswire Last night at an awards ceremony during the CMP XChange Solution Provider conference, CMP Media's CRN, the newsweekly of vital information for business and technology integrators, announced the fourteenth annual Channel Champions. The CRN Channel Champions study measures overall business and technology integrator perceptions of vendor products and services. The result is a premier resource used by business and technology integrators throughout the industry to evaluate vendors and their programs. The CRN Channel Champions survey is the largest and broadest-based technology integrator market study in the industry. This year's CRN Channel Champions survey was the most ambitious and rigorous ever conducted in its 14 year history. Between November 2003 and February 2004 more than 3,000 business and technology integrators rated vendors in 25 different product categories, providing a total of 10,000 individual vendor ratings. The business and technology integrators that participated in the study were chosen at random from CRN's subscriber list and were pre-qualified to ensure that they worked in the category, were familiar with the products, and had a significant relationship with the vendor(s) being rated. CRN specified that business and technology integrators rate only those vendors with whom they had either a strategic partner type of business relationship, when possible. Vendors 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. Business and technology integrators 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. CRN revised the evaluation criteria this year's CRN Channel Champions survey. The number of categories was expanded to 25, in order to emphasize emerging and fast-growing areas of technology and the categories of CRM, Multifunction devices, Intranet management, and Financial/Accounting software were added. The 2004 CRN Channel Champions winners are as follows: -- Wireless LAN -- Cisco -- Internet/Voice/Data services -- AT&T -- Intranet Tools -- Microsoft -- Application integration tools -- IBM -- Application development tools -- IBM -- Financial/Accounting tools -- Intuit -- Multifunction devices -- HP -- VoIP telephony -- Cisco -- Systems and network management -- IBM/Tivoli -- Enterprise security -- Symantec -- Client security -- Symantec -- CRM -- Microsoft -- Storage area network arrays -- Dell -- Networked attached storage devices -- Dell -- Storage backup devices -- IBM -- Storage management software -- Veritas -- Network laser printers -- HP -- Notebooks -- IBM -- Flat panel displays -- Viewsonic -- UPSes -- APC -- Network infrastructure -- Cisco -- Databases -- IBM -- Network operating systems -- Novell -- 32-bit servers -- IBM -- 64-bit servers -- IBM Additional awards were given to the following vendors for receiving the highest average rating in the categories in which they competed. -- Rookie of the Year: Veritas -- Technical Criteria: HP -- Channel Criteria: Cisco "Congratulations to the winning vendors of the 2004 Channel Champions survey. The winners represent leading companies, products, and services that business and technology integrators recommend to their customers," said Lisa MacKenzie, publisher, CRN. "As the vital source of information for business and technology integrators, we are please to continue to provide these integrators with the information they need to make intelligent purchasing decisions." "Our survey is the ultimate measure of customer satisfaction for vendors in the technology industry," said Michael Vizard, editor in chief of CRN. "The results demonstrate that the recognized vendors deliver high quality solutions and have many satisfied business partners." The Channel Champions awards will be published in the April 26 issue of CRN. The fourteenth annual Channel Champions awards were generously supported by: AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, and Veritas. About CRN CRN provides Business and Technology Integrators with the crucial information and analysis they need to run their businesses successfully. As an advocate and voice of the Channel, Business and Technology Integrators turn to CRN first for immediate information. With more than 20 years of experience, CRN is the most trusted source for 117,500 channel professionals. CRN can be found on the Web at http://www.crn.com/. About CMP Media LLC CMP Media LLC (http://www.cmp.com/) is a leading integrated 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, and custom publishing. SOURCE: CMP Media LLC; CRN CONTACT: Laura Piorkowski of CMP Media LLC, +1-516-562-7382, Web site: http://www.cmp.com/ |