A crowd close to 200 people packed the Paramount Conference Centre north of Toronto to find out which company would be named Solution Provider of the Year as part of CDN’s 2006 Channel Elite Awards.
The winner was Telus for its Geomatics Group, which developed an emergency response solution that the U.S. Homeland Security Department envies.
Telus, based in Vancouver, won two gold awards during the evening celebration along with a silver runner-up prize for Best Enterprise Solution.
Telus’ other gold award was for Best Online Solution.
There was a tie for Solution Provider of the Year runner-up, as Long View Systems of Calgary and Cactus Commerce of Gatineau, Que., came up just short of the top slot. Cactus did, however, win Best Enterprise Solution for its work at Credit Valley Hospital.
The night started off with renowned channel consultant Kevin McGrath handing out the Best Channel Marketing award to Softchoice for its inventive advisor guides. Two solution providers came in second in this category, Sona Computer Group and Compugen.
There were a few other multiple winners that evening. Besides its silver award for Best Channel Marketing, Compugen also picked up a silver award for Best Service Organization for its Pathways project. Also with two awards was Softchoice, which won a bronze award in Best Service Organization. Thornhill, Ont.’s OnX won a gold award in Best Mid-Market Solution, which it shared with Fingertipware. Best Mid-Market Solution was a brand new category for the Channel Elite Awards. OnX also won Silver for Best Online Solution. Coming in third in Best Online Solution was K.Centric.NET.
Long-time service and IT solution provider Ainsworth finally got its due from the judging panel and won gold as Best Service Organization.
Conamex International of Montreal won gold in Best Small Business Solution. Other runner-ups were TP Systems, which won a silver in Best Enterprise Solution. IT Matters Inc. won a silver in Best Small Business Solution, Insite Computer Group won a Bronze in Best Small Business Solution and Affinity won a bronze for Best Mid-Market Solution.
CDN would like to thank judges Ana Andreasian, director of technology at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, Bruno Roti, director of data sources at the Canadian Pension Plan and former reseller Frank Abate.
The magazine would also like to thank the sponsors Tech Data Canada, NEC Display Solutions, Hewlett-Packard Canada, Symantec Canada and Cisco Canada.
