The company received top ARC awards in the categories of Advanced Desktops and Workstations (with Lenovo), Mobile Computers (with Lenovo), Entry Level Servers (IBM eServer xSeries*), Midrange Servers (IBM eServer pSeries* and IBM eServer iSeries*) and Enterprise Storage management Software (Tivoli) from the biweekly magazine that provides strategic insight to technology integrators, at an awards ceremony held on Aug. 23, at the XChange '05 Conference in Orlando, Florida.
A model of consistent excellence, iSeries won in the Midrange Servers category (tied with pSeries in 2005) for the seventh consecutive year. Other repeat winners from 2004 were xSeries for Entry Level Servers, Tivoli for Enterprise Storage management Software, ThinkPad* for Mobile Computing, and ThinkCentre* and IntelliStation* for Advanced Desktops & Workstations. In addition to the six products that won or tied for overall category honors, IBM also won sub-category awards in support and partnership for DB2* Database Management Software in the Data Management product category. In total, IBM won the partnership sub-category for the quality of its partnering initiatives in six product families, along with five awards for product support and five for product innovation.
With 11 CRN Channel Champion Awards earned earlier this year, IBM's five ARC Company of the Year awards give it 16 overall CMP category awards -- the most by any vendor in 2005 -- and 38 overall category awards since 2003, more than Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Oracle, Computer Associates and EMC combined.
"What these results indicate is that IBM is a market-maker with staying power that values its partners and is valued by its partners," said Donn Atkins, general manager, IBM Global Business Partners. "What they say on a deeper level is that solution providers, systems integrators and independent software vendors value consistency and are consistently profiting from the broadest portfolio of innovative products and the most supportive partner programs, while some vendors are perpetually in a state of flux."
Now in its 20th year, the VARBusiness ARC Awards recognize outstanding partner programs in 19 product and service categories including desktop computers, servers, storage management, Internet application server software and networking hardware. Winners were selected based on the survey results of more than 5,000 systems integrators, IT consulting organizations, value-added resellers (VARs), solution providers and software developers.
"The VARBusiness Annual Report Card is the industry standard for measuring excellence," says Publisher Robert C. DeMarzo. "It is a meaningful benchmark because the winning companies are selected by their customers."
Research was conducted by Bernett Research Services, a Boston-based data collection company, and Answers Research, the Solana Beach, Calif.-based market research and consulting firm.
About IBM
With 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate, IBM is the world's largest information technology company. IBM is a leading provider of On Demand Business solutions and is dedicated to helping companies, Business Partners and developers leverage the potential of the Internet and network computing across a wide range of businesses and industries. The company offers a host of cross-industry and industry-specific solutions designed to meet the needs of companies of all sizes. For more information on partnering with IBM, please visit: www.ibm.com/partnerworld.
About VARBusiness Magazine
For the past 18 years, VARBusiness' strategic resources have been the gateway to the Solution Provider community. VARBusiness provides strategic insight for technology integrators through industry-defining research, in-depth editorial, channel events and innovative Web services, enabling these IT professionals to make educated decisions for their businesses, partnerships and customers. VARBusiness has been the recipient of numerous industry awards for both editorial content and design. Additional information about VARBusiness products, events and services, is available at its Web site, www.varbusiness.com.
Contact: Mike Azzi 914-642-5008 Email Contact