The second annual CRN Best of the Channel Awards recognize the outstanding accomplishments of visionary channel leaders, teams and companies within the IT channel.
“The finalists of the CRN Best of the Channel Awards represent the very best of the IT channel,” said Jennifer Follett, VP, U.S. Content, Executive Editor, CRN, The Channel Company. “Through innovation, exceptional leadership, and an unwavering commitment to partners and customers, these individuals, teams and companies are helping shape the future of the channel. We are proud to recognize their accomplishments and the lasting impact they continue to make across the industry.”
Award winners will be celebrated at the world-famous Fox Theatre in Atlanta on Oct. 13 and published subsequently on CRN.com. The CRN Best of the Channel Awards will honor applicants in both individual and company categories.
Click ahead for a look at the finalists in each category as well as the unedited bio information each applicant provided.
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Best Security Solution Provider of the Year
The Best Security Solution Provider of the Year award recognizes an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other solution provider business for overall excellence and technical acumen in delivering IT security-focused solutions to end customers.
Bespin Global US
At Bespin Global, we help organizations adopt, manage, and optimize Cloud & AI through expert-led transformation services. With 1,300+ cloud certifications, 16 global offices across 10 countries, and recognition in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for 8 consecutive years, we bring deep technical expertise and global experience to every engagement. As a premier partner for AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, we deliver customized cloud and AI solutions that help businesses modernize operations, unlock data value, and accelerate innovation.
Blue Mantis is a security-first IT services and solutions provider with a 30+ year history of successfully helping clients achieve business modernization through next-generation technologies including managed services, cybersecurity and cloud. It provides digital technology services and strategic guidance to ensure clients quickly adapt and grow through automation and innovation.
Calian Corp
Calian IT & Cyber Solutions is a leading service provider for enterprises across the globe for the last 40+ years. Our portfolio includes on-demand resourcing, IT and cybersecurity managed services, Cloud IT Infrastructure, cybersecurity services, and AI & Data, by highly certified engineers certified by leading providers.
DYOPATH is one of the largest privately held MSPs in the United States and brings over 26 years of experience in technology, cybersecurity, and end-to-end solutions to support their clients with all of their IT needs. DYOPATH now has locations across the US and Mexico and supports companies domestically and abroad. No matter the industry, DYOPATH helps organizations manage their risk, technology, and teams more effectively.
ePlus Technology
ePlus is a customer-first, services-led, and results-driven industry leader offering transformative technology solutions and services to provide the best customer outcomes. Offering a full portfolio of solutions, including artificial intelligence, security, cloud and data center, networking and collaboration, as well as managed, consultative and professional services, ePlus works closely with organizations across many industries to successfully navigate business challenges. With a long list of industry-leading partners and more than 2,130 employees, our expertise has been honed over more than three decades, giving us specialized yet broad levels of experience and knowledge.
Epoch Concepts
Epoch Concepts is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) specializing in secure, mission-ready IT solutions for the U.S. federal government, defense, and intelligence communities. The company delivers integrated cybersecurity, infrastructure, and data solutions supporting high-security, high-performance environments where reliability and compliance are critical.
Fortuna Cysec
Fortuna Cysec is a global cybersecurity solution provider focused on helping organizations reduce risk, strengthen resilience, and mature their security and compliance programs. We specialize in managed security, risk mitigation, compliance advisory, incident response, vulnerability management, and security operations services for regulated and risk-sensitive organizations across healthcare, financial services, insurance, manufacturing, government, and mission-driven sectors.
GuidePoint Security
GuidePoint Security helps organizations overcome the most complex cybersecurity challenges, mature their security posture, minimize risk and ensure compliance. As a trusted cybersecurity advisor and partner, GuidePoint keeps people, data, and operations safe. We deliver tailored cybersecurity services and offerings that adapt and scale to safeguard the nation’s leading organizations today, while preparing them to confidently face tomorrow’s cyber challenges.
People Driven Technology is a customer-obsessed, family-owned technology partner delivering outcomes across networking, cybersecurity, data center, collaboration, and physical security—on-prem, cloud, or as a service. Our unified lifecycle approach and decades of engineering expertise drive measurable success for mid-market and global enterprises across healthcare, financial, manufacturing, public sector, and beyond.
Ravanty Tech Consulting, Inc.
Ravanty has distinguished itself as a security‑first solution provider by delivering production‑grade, risk‑aware security outcomes for global, high‑trust organizations. Ravanty’s work goes beyond deploying tools—it focuses on validating security controls in real operating conditions and enabling executive‑level confidence in long‑term security decisions.
RedZone Technologies
RedZone Technologies has built a security operating model that combines cybersecurity, IT operations, compliance, and business continuity into a single accountable service structure. Rather than delivering isolated security tools or one-time assessments, RedZone focuses on continuously managing client environments through its Continuous Confidence framework, which is organized around Continuous Posture, Continuous Resilience, Continuous Compliance, and Continuous Intelligence. This approach gives clients ongoing visibility into vulnerabilities, infrastructure health, compliance status, and operational risk instead of relying on periodic audits or reactive remediation.
Stratascale
Stratascale is a premier services company proudly operating as the cybersecurity division of SHI. We’re a team of practitioners, researchers, former CISOs, and engineers who are dedicated to helping organizations fortify their defenses and achieve cyber resiliency.
Sycomp A Technology Company, Inc.
Sycomp is a global IT services and logistics provider with extensive expertise in cloud, data center, endpoint management and security solutions. Sycomp’s diverse team of consultants and engineers deliver on the company’s mission to tackle challenging global IT projects through its state-of-the-art integration and warehouse centers and global technology partnerships.
TOGA Technology
TOGA Technology delivers integrated IT services that enable organizations to modernize operations and drive measurable outcomes. With 20+ years of experience and 500+ team members, we help over 3 million end users scale through proven technology. At the core of our approach is the TOGa platform, our AI-powered Enterprise Resource Automation (ERA) solution. By connecting data and orchestrating workflows, the TOGa platform helps businesses automate operations and unlock long-term growth opportunities.
World Wide Technology
World Wide Technology (WWT) is a global technology solutions provider helping organizations make a new world happen by turning ambition into real-world outcomes. Founded in 1990, WWT combines strategy, deep technical expertise and world-class technology partnerships to design, build and scale AI, digital, cybersecurity, cloud and infrastructure solutions.
Best AI Solution Provider
The Best AI Solution Provider of the Year award recognizes an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other solution provider business for overall excellence and technical acumen in delivering AI-focused solutions to end customers over the last 12 months.
AHEAD
AHEAD accelerates strategy into execution by engineering integrated solutions across infrastructure, applications, data, and security. The company builds and manages digital platforms that power transformation for leading enterprises, modernizing platforms and workflows and applying AI to unlock the full impact of people and technology—building what others only blueprint. AHEAD helps enterprises turn AI ambition into measurable business value, with 75+ AI consultants, data, AI, and platform engineers; 100+ successful AI and data engagements delivered; 200+ cloud, data, and AI certifications; and an extended bench of 400+ presales and delivery professionals supporting client execution at scale.
Bespin Global US
At Bespin Global, we are revolutionizing the way businesses operate through the limitless possibilities of cloud technology. With a team of experts across 16 offices in 10 countries and over 1,300 cloud certifications, our expertise, and global experience are unmatched. As a top-tier premier partner for GCP, AWS, and Azure, we’ve been recognized by Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for 8 years running and have a track record of delivering results for clients ranging from startups to established enterprises. From strategy to implementation, our team of experts will guide you every step of the way, helping you ADOPT, MANAGE, and OPTIMIZE the Cloud & AI to reach new heights.
Caylent
Since 2015, Caylent has grown alongside organizations modernizing on AWS, and is the operating partner they trust to build, run, and evolve intelligent systems at scale. As an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, dedicated Anthropic partner, and AWS Managed Services Provider with 10 Partner of the Year Awards including 2025 Global GenAI, Migration, and Security Consulting Partner of the Year, Caylent combines deep AWS expertise, proprietary IP, and an agentic delivery system to move organizations from ideas to impact, faster.
CBTS
Ranked #44 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, CBTS is a strategic technology partner to enterprise and midmarket organizations across the United States and Canada. Where other providers lead with products, CBTS leads with outcomes, helping clients across every industry unlock the full business value of AI through a tightly integrated portfolio spanning AI-enabled Services, Application Modernization, Managed Hybrid Cloud, Cybersecurity, Digital Workplace, and Infrastructure. CBTS approaches every engagement with deep technical expertise and a vendor-agnostic philosophy, ensuring clients receive the right solution for their specific challenges rather than a predetermined one.
Chetu, Inc.
Founded in 2000, Chetu is a global leader in AI and digital transformation solutions. Chetu’s specialized technology and industry experts serve startups, SMBs, and Inc. 5000 companies with an unparalleled software delivery model suited to clients’ needs. Chetu’s one-stop-shop model spans the entire software technology spectrum, with a strong focus on Artificial Intelligence. Chetu simplifies AI adoption with its proprietary Track2AI™ framework, guiding clients through eight strategic steps from assessment to deployment.
Compucom
Compucom blends the power of technology with the strength of its people to drive success for enterprise organizations worldwide. Its associates are passionate about sourcing, integrating, and supporting advanced workplace technology that transforms businesses. With over 35 years of experience, Compucom has become a trusted partner with many organizations, including 5 of the top 10 Fortune 500. Compucom recognizes that fostering a thriving digital workplace demands seamless end-user experiences. As a singular provider of end-to-end technology and support solutions, Compucom streamlines enterprise IT infrastructure, transforms the digital journey, and elevate customers’ experiences.
Connection
Connection, a Fortune 1000 Global Solutions Provider, drives customer growth by calming the IT confusion and guiding the connection between people and technology. The Connection brand includes Connection Business Solutions, Connection Enterprise Solutions, and Connection Public Sector Solutions, which provide IT solutions to SMB, enterprise, and public sector markets.
ePlus Technology
ePlus is a customer-first, services-led, and results-driven industry leader offering transformative technology solutions and services to provide the best customer outcomes. Offering a full portfolio of solutions, including artificial intelligence, security, cloud and data center, networking and collaboration, as well as managed, consultative and professional services, ePlus works closely with organizations across many industries to successfully navigate business challenges. With a long list of industry-leading partners and more than 2,130 employees, our expertise has been honed over more than three decades, giving us specialized yet broad levels of experience and knowledge.
Insight
Insight Enterprises is a leading Solutions Integrator that helps clients solve technology challenges by combining the right hardware, software, and services. As a Fortune 500 technology company, backed by 35+ years of expertise and a deep network of 6,000+ partners, we deliver secure, end-to-end IT solutions for organizations around the world.
Mission Cloud, a CDW Company
Mission Cloud, A CDW Company, is a leading born-in-the-cloud managed services and consulting provider, offering end-to-end cloud services, innovative AI solutions, and software for AWS customers. As an AWS Premier Tier Partner, we help manage your technology investments, improve performance and governance, scale to meet demand, safeguard your data, and innovate fearlessly.
Quantiphi
Engineering AI-Native Transformations. Quantiphi is an award-winning AI-native digital transformation engineering company that specializes in solving complex business problems through the convergence of artificial intelligence, data engineering, and cloud technologies.
rSTAR Technologies, LLC
rSTAR Technologies is a specialist digital transformation partner built to empower asset-intensive industries with seamless integration and AI innovation. We combine 20+ years of enterprise experience with deep expertise across Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google ecosystems to deliver measurable business outcomes. We help organizations modernize legacy systems, reduce technical debt, integrate ERP and CRM platforms, and deploy AI, including advanced Agentic AI, to drive real-time decision-making and operational efficiency.
SHI International Corp
SHI is the technology partner over 17,000 customers trust to solve what’s next. Our concierge approach blends technical expertise with scalable and cost-effective infrastructure, end-user computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, & IT optimization solutions. We are passionate about delivering exceptional value and experience as we help customers select, deploy, and manage technology.
TOGA Technology
TOGA Technology delivers integrated IT services that enable organizations to modernize operations and drive measurable outcomes. With 20+ years of experience and 500+ team members, we help over 3 million end users scale through proven technology. At the core of our approach is the TOGa platform, our AI-powered Enterprise Resource Automation (ERA) solution.
WBM Technologies
WBM Technologies helps organizations turn AI into real outcomes. Based in Western Canada, we focus on how people work and support them as they adopt new tools. Our approach combines structured enablement and in-the-flow support to help teams use AI in practical ways, building confidence, improving productivity, and creating lasting change across the organization.
Best Solution Provider Team of the Year
The Best Solution Provider Team of the Year Award spotlights a group of company executives at an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other type of solution provider for over excellence in business leadership.
Calian Corp
Calian IT & Cyber Solutions is a leading service provider for enterprises across the globe for the last 40+ years. Our portfolio includes on-demand resourcing, IT and cybersecurity managed services, Cloud IT Infrastructure, cybersecurity services, and AI & Data, by highly certified engineers certified by leading providers.
ConRes
ConRes is a global, family, women-owned provider of secure, scalable, end-to-end solutions—from strategy and procurement to implementation, real-time management, and support. With over 60 years of experience, we blend innovation with deep technical expertise to help organizations modernize their environments and achieve their business goals. Whether on-premises or in the cloud, we design, deploy, and manage IT solutions tailored to your needs
ECMSI
For more than 25 years, ECMSI has been walking alongside local businesses, helping real people with real technology challenges. Our team brings centuries of combined experience, but what truly defines us is how much we care about the individuals behind every support ticket and every project. We’ve grown by building relationships, earning trust, and showing up when it matters most. Customer satisfaction has always been our top priority, and we’re proud to be the go to IT provider for companies that want to grow without being held back by technology.
Evolving Solutions serves enterprise clients across a range of industries, delivering solutions in hybrid cloud infrastructure, data availability and protection, networking and security, AIOps and automation, and AI-ready infrastructure. The leadership team operates under a disciplined weekly, quarterly, and annual planning and execution cadence, meeting regularly to align on priorities, resolve issues, and drive accountability across the organization.
GuidePoint Security
GuidePoint Security helps organizations overcome the most complex cybersecurity challenges, mature their security posture, minimize risk and ensure compliance. As a trusted cybersecurity advisor and partner, GuidePoint keeps people, data, and operations safe. We deliver tailored cybersecurity services and offerings that adapt and scale to safeguard the nation’s leading organizations today, while preparing them to confidently face tomorrow’s cyber challenges.
Microserve
Microserve, founded in 1987 and headquartered in Burnaby, BC, is one of Canada’s largest independently owned IT solutions providers. We deliver end-to-end technology services – including Managed IT, Cloud, Cybersecurity, AV, Staffing, and Mode – to public and private sector organizations nationwide. Revenue is earned through service contracts, hardware and service solutions, and managed services agreements, supporting over 350 clients across Canada.
Nucleus Networks
Nucleus Networks is a Canadian managed IT services provider delivering secure, proactive IT operations, cybersecurity, cloud services, and strategic IT advisory. We serve small and mid-sized organizations across professional services, real estate, construction, and resource-based industries that require high security, compliance readiness, and reliable IT performance.
PKA Technologies, Inc.
PKA Technologies, Inc., a certified WBE, has been supplying IT solutions to diverse business sectors since 1996. As a full service solution provider, we understand that each customer has it’s own unique business needs. For that reason, we hold the highest certification levels of each OEM we represent to offer the best in talent and solutions. We pride ourselves on our growth and long term relationships with our clients to assure that their IT business needs and initiatives are continuously met as technology endlessly and rapidly events.
Quantiphi
Engineering AI-Native Transformations. Quantiphi is an award-winning AI-native digital transformation engineering company that specializes in solving complex business problems through the convergence of artificial intelligence, data engineering, and cloud technologies.
Ravanty Tech Consulting, Inc.
Ravanty is a premier Microsoft partner specializing in Microsoft-centric Security and AI solutions. Unlike traditional MSP leadership teams that operate at arm’s length from delivery, Ravanty’s leadership team remains directly embedded in active customer engagements. Team members participate in solution architecture decisions, executive stakeholder alignment, and security governance oversight.
Tego
Tego is an engineering-led, forward-thinking technology team that creates a competitive advantage by solving problems and delivering results with remarkable efficiency. Collectively, we’ve spent decades solving IT and cybersecurity challenges while supporting the full spectrum of commercial and government entities of all sizes. We have an expert understanding of the strategies, tools, and methodologies that support mission-critical data center, security, and cloud services.
The 20
The 20 is a growth platform built exclusively for managed service providers (MSPs), helping owners scale faster, increase profitability, and build more valuable businesses. Through a combination of peer collaboration, proven operational frameworks, sales and marketing enablement, vendor partnerships, education, and business coaching, The 20 equips MSPs with the resources and community they need to accelerate growth. Today, The 20 supports a nationwide community of MSPs committed to operational excellence, innovation, and long-term success.
Best Solution Provider of the Year
The Best Solution Provider of the Year Award celebrates an MSP, VAR, systems integrator, consultant or other type of solution provider for overall excellence in business and technology acumen over the last 12 months.
Avahi
Avahi is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner and newly designated AWS Managed Service Provider specializing in cloud infrastructure, application modernization, and AI solution delivery for small and midsize businesses. Founded in 2020 and publicly rebranded to avahi.ai in 2025, Avahi has built one of the most credentialed AWS practices in North America. More than 100 individual AWS certifications back a team that holds AWS Competencies in Generative AI, Migration, DevOps, Healthcare, and SMB markets. The company serves clients across healthcare, financial services, legal technology, media, retail, manufacturing, and the public sector, delivering production solutions that run in live environments and generate measurable business outcomes.
AVI-SPL
AVI-SPL is a digital enablement solutions provider that transforms how people and technology connect to elevate experiences, create new value, and enable organizations to thrive and grow. We are the largest provider of collaboration technology solutions, which include our award-winning managed services. AVI-SPL’s highly-trained team works hand in hand with organizations worldwide, including over 86% of Fortune 100 companies, to strategize, design, deploy, manage, and support AV and UC solutions that are simple to use, scalable, serviceable, and measurable to ensure business objectives are achieved.
Calian Corp
Calian IT & Cyber Solutions is a leading service provider for enterprises across the globe for the last 40+ years. Our portfolio includes on-demand resourcing, IT and cybersecurity managed services, Cloud IT Infrastructure, cybersecurity services, and AI & Data, by highly certified engineers certified by leading providers.
Compucom
Compucom blends the power of technology with the strength of its people to drive success for enterprise organizations worldwide. Its associates are passionate about sourcing, integrating, and supporting advanced workplace technology that transforms businesses. With over 35 years of experience, Compucom has become a trusted partner with many organizations, including 5 of the top 10 Fortune 500. Compucom recognizes that fostering a thriving digital workplace demands seamless end-user experiences. As a singular provider of end-to-end technology and support solutions, Compucom streamlines enterprise IT infrastructure, transforms the digital journey, and elevate customers’ experiences.
Connection
Connection, a Fortune 1000 Global Solutions Provider, drives customer growth by calming the IT confusion and guiding the connection between people and technology. The Connection brand includes Connection Business Solutions, Connection Enterprise Solutions, and Connection Public Sector Solutions, which provide IT solutions to SMB, enterprise, and public sector markets.
DXC Technology
DXC Technology is a leading enterprise technology and innovation partner delivering software, services, and solutions to global enterprises and public sector organizations — helping them harness AI to drive outcomes at a time of exponential change with speed. With deep expertise in Managed Infrastructure Services, Application Modernization, and Industry-Specific Software Solutions, DXC modernizes, secures, and operates some of the world’s most complex technology estates.
ePlus Technology
ePlus is a customer-first, services-led, and results-driven industry leader offering transformative technology solutions and services to provide the best customer outcomes. Offering a full portfolio of solutions, including artificial intelligence, security, cloud and data center, networking and collaboration, as well as managed, consultative and professional services, ePlus works closely with organizations across many industries to successfully navigate business challenges. With a long list of industry-leading partners and more than 2,130 employees, our expertise has been honed over more than three decades, giving us specialized yet broad levels of experience and knowledge.
Evolving Solutions serves enterprise clients across a range of industries, delivering solutions in hybrid cloud infrastructure, data availability and protection, networking and security, AIOps and automation, and AI-ready infrastructure. The leadership team operates under a disciplined weekly, quarterly, and annual planning and execution cadence, meeting regularly to align on priorities, resolve issues, and drive accountability across the organization.
Framework IT, LLC
Framework IT is a privately held Managed Service Provider (MSP) founded in 2008 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. We support over 4,000 users across more than 300 organizations, primarily serving businesses with 10 to 200 employees in professional services, financial services, healthcare, and other knowledge-worker industries. Our 41 full-time, U.S.-based employees include 30 engineers holding 70+ unique industry certifications. We deliver proactive IT support, strategic technology consulting, enterprise-grade cybersecurity, cloud communications, and AI enablement as a unified partnership.
GuidePoint Security
GuidePoint Security helps organizations overcome the most complex cybersecurity challenges, mature their security posture, minimize risk and ensure compliance. As a trusted cybersecurity advisor and partner, GuidePoint keeps people, data, and operations safe. We deliver tailored cybersecurity services and offerings that adapt and scale to safeguard the nation’s leading organizations today, while preparing them to confidently face tomorrow’s cyber challenges.
Insight
Insight Enterprises is a leading Solutions Integrator that helps clients solve technology challenges by combining the right hardware, software, and services. As a Fortune 500 technology company, backed by 35+ years of expertise and a deep network of 6,000+ partners, we deliver secure, end-to-end IT solutions for organizations around the world.
Microserve
Microserve, founded in 1987 and headquartered in Burnaby, BC, is one of Canada’s largest independently owned IT solutions providers. We deliver end-to-end technology services – including Managed IT, Cloud, Cybersecurity, AV, Staffing, and Mode – to public and private sector organizations nationwide. Revenue is earned through service contracts, hardware and service solutions, and managed services agreements, supporting over 350 clients across Canada.
Monjur
Monjur is an AI-powered, attorney-supervised Contract Intelligence platform built for MSPs that manages contracts, reduces legal risk, streamlines operations, and compress sales cycles so clients can securely grow their business with confidence.
NWN
NWN is the leading AI-powered technology solutions provider for North America’s most innovative public and private organizations. For over 30 years, NWN has helped over 6,000 CIOs deliver technology modernization programs with its Intelligent Workplace, Customer Experience (CX), Managed Devices, Cybersecurity and Public Safety, Connectivity, and Intelligent Cloud solutions.
People Driven Technology
People Driven Technology is a customer-obsessed, family-owned technology partner delivering outcomes across networking, cybersecurity, data center, collaboration, and physical security—on-prem, cloud, or as a service. Our unified lifecycle approach and decades of engineering expertise drive measurable success for mid-market and global enterprises across healthcare, financial, manufacturing, public sector, and beyond.
Quantiphi
Engineering AI-Native Transformations. Quantiphi is an award-winning AI-native digital transformation engineering company that specializes in solving complex business problems through the convergence of artificial intelligence, data engineering, and cloud technologies.
SHI International Corp
SHI is the technology partner over 17,000 customers trust to solve what’s next. Our concierge approach blends technical expertise with scalable and cost-effective infrastructure, end-user computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, & IT optimization solutions. We are passionate about delivering exceptional value and experience as we help customers select, deploy, and manage technology.
Thrive
Thrive is a NextGen 3.0 global technology outsourcing provider that empowers small and mid-market organizations to transform their technology into a strategic advantage. Offering services from AI and cybersecurity to cloud, compliance, and traditional MSP/MSSP solutions, Thrive develops strategies that standardize, scale, and automate technology to achieve outsized ROI.
Best Solution Provider CEO of the Year
This award will go the top executive who is most deserving of recognition for achievements in leading a solution provider business over the past 12 months. CEOs of MSPs, VARs, systems integrators, consultants or other solution providers headquartered in North America are eligible.
Richard M. Boudria, Jr. is the Chairman and CEO of BCN Telecom, a leading provider of managed network and technology solutions serving more than 8,000 businesses nationwide. BCN specializes in delivering customized connectivity, cloud, security, voice, and managed solutions that simplify complexity, enhance security, and drive business growth. BCN also provides expert guidance to partners and customers on building networks that are ready for artificial intelligence, helping organizations modernize their infrastructure to support the performance, reliability, and low latency demands that AI workloads require.
Anthony J. D’Ambrosi is the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board for Abacus, with over thirty years of diverse business leadership and investment expertise across global Information Technology, Managed Services, Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity. D’Ambrosi leads the company’s mission, vision, and strategy of growth and value creation for its clients, employees, partners and stakeholders.
Jaime Gmach co-founded Evolving Solutions almost 30 years ago and continues to lead the company today as its CEO. Together with the extended Evolving Solutions team, Jaime has built the company into a leading technology solution provider focused on helping enterprise clients modernize and automate their mission-critical infrastructure to support digital transformation. He represents the organization externally on several vendor and partner Advisory Councils.
Jon Groves is CEO of Logicalis US, a leading global managed services and digital transformation provider. Since joining in 2020, he has guided the organization through a period of rapid technological change, positioning Logicalis as a leader in AI-ready infrastructure, security, and intelligent managed services.
Stan Oliver, DigiFlight and Camelot Secure
Stan Oliver founded DigiFlight in 1999 to meet IT and Aerospace Industry demands around web services, IT infrastructure and aviation modernization, and cybersecurity. DigiFlight has grown from two to over 300 employees, and 40 DoD, Intelligence Community, and commercial contracts in 2022. DigiFlight is recognized as a global leader in attack helicopter training and Cyber Hunt and Incident Response.
Anthony Romero, TOGA Technology
Anthony “Tony” Romero is the CEO of TOGA Technology, an AI-enabled lifecycle and digital transformation services company serving enterprise, midmarket, healthcare, government, and education customers across North America. Romero has spent more than 30 years leading transformation across technology, retail, services, and operations organizations. Prior to TOGA Technology, he held executive leadership roles at Sears, OfficeMax, and Company.com, where he developed a reputation for operational leadership, scalable growth strategies, and customer-centric innovation
Jennifer Roy, Nucleus Networks
Jennifer Roy is the Chief Executive Officer of Nucleus Networks, a leading Canadian Managed IT Services provider based in Vancouver, BC. She oversees company performance and long-term growth, ensuring Nucleus delivers innovative and people-centered IT solutions across Canada. With more than a decade in the MSP sector, Jennifer is known for operational excellence, sustainable growth, and developing high-performing teams. Her leadership philosophy centers on accountability, innovation, and empathy. Jennifer’s industry recognition includes CRN’s Women of the Channel Power 100 Solution Provider List, the Solution Provider Power 80, and CRN’s 2025 CEO of the Year Award.
Bryan Teipel is the Chief Executive Officer and founding leader of People Driven Technology (PDT), a family-owned company built with clear intent, not just to deliver technology, but to put people, relationships, and outcomes at the center of the business. From the beginning, he established a culture grounded in trust, accountability, and autonomy, enabling teams to make the right decisions for customers without unnecessary friction.
Chris Vincent is the Chief Executive Officer of Global Data Systems, Inc. (GDS), a Louisiana‑based technology solutions provider serving organizations nationwide. As CEO, Chris is responsible for setting corporate strategy, driving operational execution, and ensuring long‑term financial and organizational health. He leads executive oversight across sales, service delivery, security, innovation, and customer experience.
Best Security Vendor of the Year
The Best Security Vendor of the Year award recognizes an IT manufacturer for overall excellence in channel partnership in delivering security-focused offerings to market through the indirect channel.
1Password
1Password is redefining identity security for how people and AI agents work today. The 1Password® Unified Access platform discovers and secures identities and credentials, authorizes just-in-time access, and audits actions across human and AI agents. 1Password SaaS Manager helps organizations discover and secure access to SaaS applications while optimizing spend. 1Password’s enterprise vault protects more than 1.3 billion credentials and secrets and is trusted by more than 1 million developers and over 180,000 businesses.
Abnormal AI
Abnormal AI is an AI-native cybersecurity company protecting organizations from the full spectrum of email and human-layer attacks — business email compromise, vendor fraud, account takeover, and socially engineered threats that bypass traditional defenses. The Abnormal Behavior Platform uses behavioral AI to learn what is normal (or “known good”) across every identity, communication pattern, and business relationship, then autonomously detects and remediates attacks that deviate from that baseline.
Arctic Wolf
Arctic Wolf is the cybersecurity and AI company that ends cyber risk by transforming it into business resilience. Powered by the Aurora® Superintelligence Platform, Arctic Wolf delivers modern security operations built on proprietary AI and decades of real-world expertise. By combining AI‑driven automation with expert validated precision, Arctic Wolf helps organizations confidently manage cyber risk— so organizations can operate with control and the freedom to innovate.
Barracuda Networks
Barracuda is a leading global cybersecurity company delivering complete resilience made easy to buy, deploy and use through a partner-first model. Our intelligent BarracudaONE platform provides cyber resilience across email, data, applications, networks, and managed XDR within an open ecosystem. Trusted by hundreds of thousands of organizations and partners worldwide, Barracuda delivers industry-leading solutions and support, powered by people and enhanced by AI, for all size businesses.
Cavelo
Cavelo helps MSPs and MSSPs deliver data security posture management (DSPM) services to their customers. Its agent-based platform provides complete visibility of sensitive data, continuous risk assessment and actionable insights that enable MSPs to strengthen security postures, meet compliance mandates, and drive new revenue streams. Built for channel scalability, Cavelo empowers partners to deliver value-added services that address today’s most pressing security challenges.
Coro
Coro is the leading cybersecurity platform purpose-built for midsized organizations and Lean IT teams. Its unified platform consolidates endpoint, email, network, and cloud security into a single system, replacing fragmented tools and hardware-heavy solutions with automated protection. Coro is designed to solve the operational burden midmarket organizations face: too many alerts, too few security specialists, and increasing compliance pressure. By simplifying deployment and automatically detecting, investigating, and remediating threats, Coro gives organizations the capabilities of a full security department without requiring additional headcount.
CyberFOX
CyberFOX is a global cybersecurity software provider that delivers privileged access management, password management, and DNS filtering built specifically for MSPs and lean IT teams. The company was founded in 2019 and headquartered in Tampa, Florida, with operations and users globally. Where enterprise security vendors have historically priced and engineered their products for Fortune 100 buyers with dedicated security teams, CyberFOX closes what it calls the “resiliency gap.” The company’s flagship products (AutoElevate for PAM, Password Boss WebApp for credential management, and the CyberFOX DNS Filtering) protect the small and midmarket organizations that make up the vast majority of cyberattack targets but have the least capacity to respond.
Dataminr
Dataminr is the global leader in AI-powered real-time event, threat & risk intelligence. We deliver the earliest actionable intelligence across the physical, digital, and cyber domains. We first pioneered Multi-Modal Fusion AI, synthesizing text in 150 languages, image, video, audio, and sensor signals across 1M+ public data sources to deliver the fastest, most accurate real-time event detection. Our AI innovations, including ReGenAI and Intel Agents, build on this foundation by delivering Live Briefs, Client-Tailored Intelligence, and Predictive Intelligence.
Exabeam
Exabeam is the leader in Behavior Intelligence for the agentic enterprise. As organizations deploy digital workers and confront machine-speed adversaries, Exabeam applies agent-powered analytics to understand and govern the behavior of both human and non-human insiders. With integrated Exabeam Nova cybersecurity agents, Exabeam delivers flexible, industry-proven solutions for insider threat coverage of humans and agents and faster, more accurate threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR).
Huntress Labs
Huntress is a cybersecurity company that provides a managed agentic security platform designed for MSPs, IT teams, and under-resourced organizations. The company combines managed endpoint, identity, SIEM, awareness training, and posture management capabilities with a 24/7, AI-centric, human-led SOC to deliver enterprise-grade security that helps organizations defend against modern cyber threats without the overhead of building large internal security teams.
Infoblox
Infoblox is a network management and security company specializing in DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management (DDI) for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The flagship platform, Universal DDI, delivers a SaaS-based, unified solution that gives enterprise teams a single source of truth across on-premises and cloud infrastructure. Beyond core network management, Infoblox integrates DNS-layer security and AI-driven SOC insights to help security and network operations teams detect and block threats in real time. The company serves a broad enterprise audience with flexible deployment options including on-prem, managed service, and full SaaS.
JumpCloud
JumpCloud® is the AI-powered unified IT management platform designed to secure the modern workforce. By consolidating identity, device, and access management, JumpCloud provides intelligent, secure IT that scales from human users to autonomous AI agents. We help organizations around the globe eliminate complexity and turn AI risk into an optimized advantage, ensuring the right people and agents have secure access to the right resources at all times.
Okta
Okta, Inc. is The World’s Identity Company™. We secure AI, machine, and human identity so everyone is free to safely use any technology.
Proofpoint
Proofpoint is a global leader in human-and agent-centric cybersecurity, securing how people, data and AI agents connect across email, cloud and collaboration tools. Proofpoint is a trusted partner to over 80 of the Fortune 100, over 10,000 large enterprises, and millions of smaller organizations in stopping threats, preventing data loss, and building resilience across people and AI workflows. Proofpoint’s collaboration and data security platform helps organizations of all sizes protect and empower their people while embracing AI securely and confidently.
Sophos
Sophos scales to meet customers wherever they are on their security journey, offering 24/7 threat monitoring, prevention, detection, and response. Our complete portfolio includes endpoint, network, email, and cloud security products, enhanced with Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and security advisory services.
ThreatLocker
ThreatLocker is a global cybersecurity leader that stops cyberattacks before they happen. The company’s Zero Trust Platform prevents breaches from both known and unknown threats by allowing only explicitly trusted software and activity across endpoints, networks, and cloud systems. Built to deploy quickly and scale across complex environments, the platform reduces operational overhead while keeping business running uninterrupted.
Wiz protects everything organizations build and run. The Wiz Security Platform connects code, cloud, and runtime into a single shared context, allowing security and engineering teams to understand real risk, fix issues at the source, and stop threats as they emerge. Built for the cloud and AI era, Wiz enables secure-by-default development, automatic hardening, and continuous risk reduction across the entire application lifecycle.
Zero Networks
Zero Networks helps organizations contain attacks, minimize blast radius, and maintain business continuity – even when attackers get inside.
Best AI Vendor of the Year
The Best AI Vendor of the Year award recognizes an IT manufacturer for overall excellence in channel partnership in delivering AI-focused offerings to market through the indirect channel.
Arctic Wolf
Arctic Wolf is the cybersecurity and AI company that ends cyber risk by transforming it into business resilience. Powered by the Aurora® Superintelligence Platform, Arctic Wolf delivers modern security operations built on proprietary AI and decades of real-world expertise. By combining AI‑driven automation with expert validated precision, Arctic Wolf helps organizations confidently manage cyber risk— so organizations can operate with control and the freedom to innovate.
Atera
Atera is building the future of IT, one where AI agents resolve the majority of IT incidents. Our mission is simple: Let People Work. At the heart of this vision is Robin by Atera, an autonomous IT agent built on patented technology that detects issues, diagnoses root causes, executes fixes, and verifies resolution end to end, without a technician ever touching it. This is not copilot-assisted IT. This is Autonomous IT that resolves 92% of technical issues. Unlike legacy solutions that layer AI on top of broken workflows and still require a human to act, Atera is the only platform that autonomously resolves technical IT incidents from detection through diagnosis, remediation, and closure, without human intervention.
Compliance Scorecard
Compliance Scorecard is a Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platform purpose-built for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), helping them deliver Compliance as a Service through policy management, risk assessments, governance workflows, and compliance automation. Created by MSPs for MSPs, the platform enables partners to operationalize compliance, manage regulatory requirements, and scale recurring compliance services across client environments.
Concentric AI
Concentric AI is intelligent data security made easy, helping businesses discover, understand, and protect sensitive information across cloud and on-prem environments. Its AI-powered data security governance solutions provide clear visibility into sensitive data and risk, reducing exposure and streamlining compliance through contextual analysis, continuous monitoring, and automated remediation. As organizations expand AI adoption, the platform uncovers shadow AI, establishes guardrails, and prevents confidential data from being shared with prompts, models, or unauthorized users.
Cyera
Cyera is the industry-leading AI Security Platform. As AI transforms how data is created, accessed, and used, Cyera’s mission is to enable global enterprises to adopt AI at scale by securing the data that fuels it. The platform provides organizations with precise visibility, and intelligent controls to secure data everywhere – at rest, in motion, and in use, whether used by humans or agents.
Cynomi
Cynomi is the agentic Security Growth Platform for MSPs, MSSPs, and cyber advisory vCISO practices, redefining how cybersecurity services are delivered by enabling providers to scale expertise, automate execution, and accelerate growth. Powered by CISO Intelligence, Cynomi embeds the decision-making logic of an experienced security leader into every workflow, enabling service providers to deliver strategic advisory, proactive risk reduction, and ongoing security planning at scale.
Dataminr
Dataminr is the global leader in AI-powered real-time event, threat & risk intelligence. We deliver the earliest actionable intelligence across the physical, digital, and cyber domains. We first pioneered Multi-Modal Fusion AI, synthesizing text in 150 languages, image, video, audio, and sensor signals across 1M+ public data sources to deliver the fastest, most accurate real-time event detection. Our AI innovations, including ReGenAI and Intel Agents, build on this foundation by delivering Live Briefs, Client-Tailored Intelligence, and Predictive Intelligence.
Guardare, Inc.
Guardare delivers AI-driven, real-time visibility across users, devices, and software—unifying IT and security data to prioritize risk by business impact.
Harmonic Security
Harmonic Security is the only purpose-built AI Data Security platform designed from the ground up for the generative AI era. While legacy DLP vendors retrofit AI marketing onto old architecture, Harmonic delivers real-time, semantic-level visibility and control over what employees share with 500+ AI tools — deployed via browser extension in hours, no network changes, no heavy agent.
Hatz AI
Hatz AI is a Managed AI platform purpose-built for the MSP channel. Hatz gives businesses control over AI — combining curated AI models, apps, workflows, agents, integrations, governance controls, and multi-tenant management in one platform built for MSPs and their SMB customers. MSPs use Hatz to build, sell, deploy, manage, and scale AI practices across their customer base.
Intermedia Intelligent Communications
Intermedia is a cloud communications and collaboration company that provides unified communications as a service (UCaaS), contact center solutions (CCaaS), email, video conferencing, file sharing, and productivity tools for businesses. Its platform is designed to help organizations communicate and collaborate securely across voice, video, chat, contact center, and Microsoft Teams integrations. Intermedia is also known for its strong partner and service provider ecosystem, offering white-label and co-branded solutions for telecom carriers, managed service providers (MSPs), and channel partners.
Kentik
Kentik is the network intelligence company for modern infrastructure teams, delivering real-time network visibility, observability, and intelligence to the service providers that operate the world’s most critical and complex networks. The platform serves a broad cross-section of the telecommunications and digital infrastructure ecosystem, including tier-one backbones, regional carriers, cable MSOs, CDN operators, MSPs, data centers, cloud providers, hyperscalers, and more.
Lenovo is a $83 billion revenue global technology powerhouse, ranked #196 in the Fortune Global 500, and serving millions of customers every day in 180 markets. Guided by its vision of “Smarter Technology for All”, Lenovo is executing a Hybrid AI strategy that spans Personal AI – one personal AI, multiple devices; and Enterprise AI – helping customers turn data into insights and value. This strategy is delivered through the Group’s commitment to world-class innovation and a full-stack AI portfolio, including devices (PCs, workstations, smartphones, tablets, accessories), infrastructure solutions (server, storage, edge, high performance computing and software defined infrastructure), as well as software, solutions, and services. With a global footprint spanning 21 research and development locations in 11 markets, and a global supply chain including more than 30 manufacturing sites across 10 markets, Lenovo is widely recognized for its operational excellence.
LogicMonitor
LogicMonitor is the AI-first platform for Autonomous IT, enabling enterprises to operate complex digital systems with greater resilience, efficiency, and confidence. By unifying visibility from user to code across infrastructure, cloud, Internet, and digital experience, LogicMonitor delivers the intelligence required to anticipate issues, eliminate blind spots, and take action automatically.
SentinelOne
SentinelOne is the leader in AI security, using AI and automation to give defenders a decisive operating advantage across endpoints, identity, cloud, and AI. Powered by Autonomous Security Intelligence, the platform protects nearly one-fifth of the Fortune 500 and hundreds of Global 2000 enterprises.
SolarWinds
SolarWinds is an IT infrastructure management company serving over 300,000 customers across 190+ countries. The company provides powerful, affordable software through its flagship Orion Platform, delivering unified observability, ITSM, and database management for hybrid IT environments. Its product portfolio spans network monitoring, infrastructure and systems management, database observability, application performance, log management, and IT service management.
Viirtue, Inc
Viirtue is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based wholesale voice and UCaaS provider that enables MSPs and telecom resellers to sell AI-powered voice solutions under their own brand. Built on its proprietary ViiBE platform, Viirtue delivers a fully white-labeled stack spanning quote-to-cash, billing, tax automation, and compliance, with AI Voice Agents native to the Viirtue Cloud PBX rather than bolted onto a third-party system. Viirtue’s AI Voice Agents understand natural language, train on each client’s private knowledge base, and perform real business functions like routing calls, authenticating callers, creating tickets, scheduling appointments, and escalating to humans with full context.
Wildix
Wildix is a European‐born, globally scaled UCaaS provider focused on AI‐enabled business communications and measurable outcomes for SMB and mid‐market customers. Over the past two decades, we have built a unified platform that brings together voice, video, messaging and automation so that teams can communicate, collaborate and track data without friction. Today, we support around 1.3 million active seats in 135 countries. We operate a 100% channel‐only model with more than 800 partners worldwide, who own the customer relationship end‐to‐end while we provide the platform, innovation, training and co‐execution that power their growth.
Best Channel Marketing Team of the Year
This award will honor an outstanding group responsible for marketing at a vendor, distributor, marketplace or technology alliance that can quantify the generated demand and increased brand or project awareness they drove for their channel business and that of their solution provider partners.
AireSpring
AireSpring is a global managed network services provider delivering connectivity, cybersecurity, managed IT, mobility, and AI-powered network management solutions in 190+ countries. Built on a 100% channel-exclusive model, AireSpring helps enterprises simplify complex IT environments through managed SD-WAN, SASE, cloud communications, wireless connectivity, and the AIreCONTROL ITSM platform, which provides centralized visibility, operational intelligence, and proactive network management backed by 24/7 Tier 3 expert support.
Balata Data
Balata Data is dedicated to being the leader in premium Data Center Solutions, specializing in Third-Party Maintenance (TPM), IT Asset Disposition (ITAD), and Lifecycle Services for VARs and GSIs. With 75+ years of expertise from our founders, we provide innovative, high-quality solutions that extend IT asset lifecycles, cut costs, and support sustainability. Our channel-only model ensures trusted partnerships, empowering VARs and GSIs to succeed while minimizing environmental impact through smarter IT practices.
Carahsoft Technology Corp
Carahsoft is The Trusted IT Solutions Provider, delivering cybersecurity, AI, cloud and emerging technologies to Federal, State and Local Government, Education, Healthcare and Enterprise markets. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, the company generated more than $21.8 billion in revenue in 2025 and continues to exceed financial expectations while scaling its ecosystem. As a master aggregator, Carahsoft supports more than 1,000 technology vendors and over 4,000 channel partners, enabling scalable, compliant solutions that accelerate mission outcomes. Through its “Technology by Policy” approach, the company aligns innovation with regulatory and procurement frameworks, helping organizations adopt and deploy critical technologies efficiently.
Commvault
Commvault is a leader in unified resilience at enterprise scale. In a constantly evolving threat landscape, Commvault keeps customers ready by unifying data security, identity resilience, and cyber recovery, on one cloud-native, AI-enabled platform. Customers trust Commvault to conduct the fastest, most complete recoveries – not just their data, but their entire business. Purpose-built for the agentic enterprise, Commvault also enables organizations to safely embrace AI while protecting against AI-driven threats.
D&H Distributing
D&H Distributing is a leading technology distributor of IT and electronics offering end-to-end solutions for today’s reseller and retailer and the clients they serve across the SMB and Consumer markets.
Eaton
Eaton is an intelligent power management company dedicated to improving the quality of life and protecting the environment for people everywhere. We are guided by our commitment to do business right, to operate sustainably and to help our customers manage power ─ today and well into the future. By capitalizing on the global growth trends of electrification and digitalization, we’re accelerating the planet’s transition to renewable energy and helping to solve the world’s most urgent power management challenges.
Expel is human-led, AI-accelerated security. Our MDR solutions use human expertise and AI to work with the tools organizations already have, providing coverage across critical attack surfaces such as cloud, identity, email, SIEM, SaaS, and on-prem environments — out in the open, alongside our customers. No black boxes. No rip-and-replace. Just clearer decisions, faster action, and security operations that get stronger over time.
Ingram Micro is a leading technology company in the global information technology ecosystem. With the ability to reach nearly 90% of the global population, we play a vital role in the worldwide IT sales channel, bringing products and services from technology manufacturers and cloud providers to a highly diversified base of business-to-business technology experts. Through Ingram Micro Xvantage, our AI-powered digital platform, we offer what we believe to be the industry’s first comprehensive business-to-consumer-like experience, integrating hardware and cloud subscriptions, personalized recommendations, instant pricing, order tracking, and billing automation. We also provide a broad range of technology services, including financing, specialized marketing, lifecycle management, and technical pre- and post-sales professional support.
Lenovo is a $83 billion revenue global technology powerhouse, ranked #196 in the Fortune Global 500, and serving millions of customers every day in 180 markets. Guided by its vision of “Smarter Technology for All”, Lenovo is executing a Hybrid AI strategy that spans Personal AI – one personal AI, multiple devices; and Enterprise AI – helping customers turn data into insights and value. This strategy is delivered through the Group’s commitment to world-class innovation and a full-stack AI portfolio, including devices (PCs, workstations, smartphones, tablets, accessories), infrastructure solutions (server, storage, edge, high performance computing and software defined infrastructure), as well as software, solutions, and services. With a global footprint spanning 21 research and development locations in 11 markets, and a global supply chain including more than 30 manufacturing sites across 10 markets, Lenovo is widely recognized for its operational excellence.
Schneider Electric is a global industrial technology leader in electrification, automation and digitization, providing scalable, clean energy solutions that redefine how we live, work, and build, in smart industries, resilient infrastructure, future-proof data centers, intelligent buildings, and intuitive homes.
TD SYNNEX is a leading global distributor and solutions aggregator for the IT ecosystem. We’re an innovative partner helping more than 150,000 customers in 100+ countries to maximize the value of technology investments, demonstrate business outcomes and unlock growth opportunities. Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, and Fremont, California, TD SYNNEX’s 23,000 co-workers are dedicated to uniting compelling IT products, services and solutions from 2,500+ best-in-class technology vendors.
Veeam Software is the Data and AI Trust Company, specializing in helping organizations ensure their data and AI are fully understood, secured, and resilient to enable the acceleration of safe AI at scale. As the market leader in both data resilience and data security posture management, Veeam is built for the convergence of identity, data, security, and AI risk. Veeam delivers deep contextual intelligence across every data asset, identity, and AI model. The company governs access for both humans and AI agents, automates privacy, compliance, and remediation processes, and protects and recovers organizations from modern threats – including ransomware, disasters, AI errors, and ensuring the restoration of clean, trusted data.
We accelerate digital transformation so our customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. Our cloud native Zero Trust Exchange platform protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location.
Best Channel Team of the Year
This award recognizes a group of channel management leaders from a technology vendor, distributor or marketplace for its efforts to help its channel ecosystem succeed over the last 12 months.
Arctic Wolf
Arctic Wolf is the cybersecurity and AI company that ends cyber risk by transforming it into business resilience. Powered by the Aurora® Superintelligence Platform, Arctic Wolf delivers modern security operations built on proprietary AI and decades of real-world expertise. By combining AI‑driven automation with expert validated precision, Arctic Wolf helps organizations confidently manage cyber risk— so organizations can operate with control and the freedom to innovate.
Balata Data
Balata Data is dedicated to being the leader in premium Data Center Solutions, specializing in Third-Party Maintenance (TPM), IT Asset Disposition (ITAD), and Lifecycle Services for VARs and GSIs. With 75+ years of expertise from our founders, we provide innovative, high-quality solutions that extend IT asset lifecycles, cut costs, and support sustainability. Our channel-only model ensures trusted partnerships, empowering VARs and GSIs to succeed while minimizing environmental impact through smarter IT practices.
D&H Distributing
D&H Distributing is a leading technology distributor of IT and electronics offering end-to-end solutions for today’s reseller and retailer and the clients they serve across the SMB and Consumer markets.
Infinidat, a Lenovo company
Infinidat, a Lenovo company, provides enterprises and service providers with a platform-native primary and secondary storage architecture that delivers comprehensive data services based on InfiniVerse®. This unique platform delivers outstanding IT operating benefits, support for modern workloads across on-premises and hybrid multi-cloud environments. Infinidat’s cyber resilient-by-design infrastructure, consumption-based performance, 100% availability, and cyber security guaranteed SLAs align with enterprise IT and business priorities.
Intermedia Intelligent Communications
Intermedia is a cloud communications and collaboration company that provides unified communications as a service (UCaaS), contact center solutions (CCaaS), email, video conferencing, file sharing, and productivity tools for businesses. Its platform is designed to help organizations communicate and collaborate securely across voice, video, chat, contact center, and Microsoft Teams integrations. Intermedia is also known for its strong partner and service provider ecosystem, offering white-label and co-branded solutions for telecom carriers, managed service providers (MSPs), and channel partners.
Lenovo is a $83 billion revenue global technology powerhouse, ranked #196 in the Fortune Global 500, and serving millions of customers every day in 180 markets. Guided by its vision of “Smarter Technology for All”, Lenovo is executing a Hybrid AI strategy that spans Personal AI – one personal AI, multiple devices; and Enterprise AI – helping customers turn data into insights and value. This strategy is delivered through the Group’s commitment to world-class innovation and a full-stack AI portfolio, including devices (PCs, workstations, smartphones, tablets, accessories), infrastructure solutions (server, storage, edge, high performance computing and software defined infrastructure), as well as software, solutions, and services. With a global footprint spanning 21 research and development locations in 11 markets, and a global supply chain including more than 30 manufacturing sites across 10 markets, Lenovo is widely recognized for its operational excellence.
Meter
Meter is a vertically integrated networking company providing hardware, software, services, ISP, and autonomous networks – all built on a single data pipeline from the local network to the data center.
Object First
Object First and its flagship product Ootbi represent a compelling opportunity for channel partners looking to deliver real, measurable value to their customers. Ootbi is purpose-built for Veeam environments and designed to ensure backup data cannot be altered or deleted under any circumstances, even if credentials are compromised. In a threat landscape where ransomware recovery capability is no longer optional, partners who bring Ootbi to their customers are equipped to lead some of the most important conversations happening in boardrooms today, from business resilience and data sovereignty to regulatory compliance. Object First makes it easy for partners to do exactly that. Operating 100% through the channel, the company has built a straightforward, effective partner program focused on fast onboarding, accessible benefits, and tangible results, all backed by a dedicated support team committed to making partners and their customers successful.
Omnissa
Omnissa is the leading digital work platform company, empowering the world’s dynamic workforces to do their best work from anywhere. The company’s AI-driven workspace platform helps organizations and their people unlock exponential business value with industry-leading solutions that include Unified Endpoint Management, Virtual Apps and Desktops, Digital Employee Experience and Security & Compliance. Trusted by 26,000 customers worldwide, Omnissa is a privately-held company with 4,000 employees and a 20-year track record in defining digital workspaces.
OpenText
OpenText is a global leader in data management for enterprise AI, helping organizations protect, govern, and activate their data with confidence.
Pax8
Pax8 is the global AI and cloud Marketplace for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Pax8 connects service providers and technology companies on a unified platform to discover, buy, sell, deploy and manage technology solutions for SMBs. More than 47,000 IT partners and 800,000 SMBs rely on Pax8 for expertise, automation and real-time insights to stay productive, protected and prepared for the AI economy.
Qlik
Serving tens of thousands of customers worldwide, including 75% of the Fortune 500, Qlik delivers solutions across data integration, data quality, analytics, and AI. Our trusted data products, powerful analytics engine, and agentic experience work together to help customers reduce risk, control costs, and adapt as AI, data, and business needs continue to evolve – without locking them into rigid systems.
Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500, enabling customers to bridge traditional and cloud-native environments seamlessly and execute on modern IT architectures.
Scale Computing
Scale Computing™ is the industry’s largest edge-first platform company, uniquely positioned to power the AI-driven future of distributed enterprises. Providing edge computing, managed network security, re-virtualization and hyperconverged solutions, Scale Computing delivers an integrated infrastructure that adapts and scales from one to 50,000 locations. When ease-of-use, high availability, and total cost of ownership matter, SC//Platform™ edge solution is the ideal infrastructure platform for organizations of any size, across all verticals and industries.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. The ServiceNow AI Platform integrates with any cloud, any model, and any data source to orchestrate how work flows across the enterprise. By unifying legacy systems, departmental tools, cloud applications, and AI agents, ServiceNow provides a single pane of glass that connects intelligence to execution across every corner of business. With more than 100 billion workflows running on the platform each year, ServiceNow helps organizations turn fragmented operations into coordinated, autonomous workflows that deliver measurable results.
Slide
Slide is a modern, security-first Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BCDR) company built exclusively for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Founded by Austin McChord (Datto Founder & former CEO) and Michael Fass (former Datto General Counsel & Chief People Officer), Slide is led by a team of industry veterans with deep expertise in backup, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity. Built from scratch with a clean-room codebase and free from legacy technical debt, Slide delivers a high-performance, easy-to-use platform designed for the future of MSPs.
TD SYNNEX is a leading global distributor and solutions aggregator for the IT ecosystem. We’re an innovative partner helping more than 150,000 customers in 100+ countries to maximize the value of technology investments, demonstrate business outcomes and unlock growth opportunities. Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, and Fremont, California, TD SYNNEX’s 23,000 co-workers are dedicated to uniting compelling IT products, services and solutions from 2,500+ best-in-class technology vendors.
VDURA
VDURA is Modern Data Storage for AI & HPC. Built on 25+ years of parallel file system heritage from Panasas, VDURA delivers its HYDRA architecture: a fully software-defined, microservices-based platform combining true parallel file system performance with object-grade resilience and intelligent mixed-fleet tiering. The VDURA Data Platform V12 pairs NVMe flash with SATA HDD in a single global namespace, delivering up to 2.7 TB/s per rack with 60%+ lower total cost of ownership compared to all-flash alternatives.
Best Vendor of the Year
The Best Vendor of the Year Award recognizes an IT manufacturer for overall excellence in channel partnership over the last 12 months.
Arctic Wolf
Arctic Wolf is the cybersecurity and AI company that ends cyber risk by transforming it into business resilience. Powered by the Aurora® Superintelligence Platform, Arctic Wolf delivers modern security operations built on proprietary AI and decades of real-world expertise. By combining AI‑driven automation with expert validated precision, Arctic Wolf helps organizations confidently manage cyber risk— so organizations can operate with control and the freedom to innovate.
Barracuda Networks
Barracuda is a leading global cybersecurity company delivering complete resilience made easy to buy, deploy and use through a partner-first model. Our intelligent BarracudaONE platform provides cyber resilience across email, data, applications, networks, and managed XDR within an open ecosystem. Trusted by hundreds of thousands of organizations and partners worldwide, Barracuda delivers industry-leading solutions and support, powered by people and enhanced by AI, for all size businesses.
Cloudflare, Inc.
Cloudflare, Inc. is the leading connectivity cloud company. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications, and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Powered by one of the world’s largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day.
Compliance Scorecard
Compliance Scorecard is a Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platform purpose-built for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), helping them deliver Compliance as a Service through policy management, risk assessments, governance workflows, and compliance automation. Created by MSPs for MSPs, the platform enables partners to operationalize compliance, manage regulatory requirements, and scale recurring compliance services across client environments.
Dataminr
Dataminr is the global leader in AI-powered real-time event, threat & risk intelligence. We deliver the earliest actionable intelligence across the physical, digital, and cyber domains. We first pioneered Multi-Modal Fusion AI, synthesizing text in 150 languages, image, video, audio, and sensor signals across 1M+ public data sources to deliver the fastest, most accurate real-time event detection. Our AI innovations, including ReGenAI and Intel Agents, build on this foundation by delivering Live Briefs, Client-Tailored Intelligence, and Predictive Intelligence.
Exclaimer
Exclaimer is the global leader in email signature management for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Its cloud platform enables organizations to centrally manage and automate email signatures and video meeting branding, ensuring consistent corporate identity, reducing brand and compliance risk, and meeting regulatory requirements across everyday business communications.
Granite Telecommunications
Granite delivers advanced communications and technology solutions to businesses and government agencies throughout the United States and Canada. The company serves more than two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies and has 1.75 million voice and data lines under management, supporting more than 650,000 locations. Founded in 2002, Granite has grown to be one of the largest competitive telecommunications carriers in the U.S. by simplifying sourcing and management of voice, data and cellular service with a single point of contact and consolidated invoicing for all locations nationwide.
Halo
Halo has demonstrated exceptional commitment to its channel-first strategy, delivering sustained growth, innovation, and measurable success for our global partner community across North America, EMEA, and APAC. As a 100% channel-focused vendor, every investment we make is designed to help our partners win more business, increase profitability, and deliver greater value to their customers. Our technical sales, onboarding, customer success, and partner enablement teams work in close alignment with partners to ensure rapid time-to-value, helping them successfully displace legacy solutions and grow recurring revenue opportunities.
HP Inc.
HP Inc. is a global technology leader redefining the Future of Work. Operating in more than 180 countries, HP delivers innovative and AI-powered devices, software, services and subscriptions that drive business growth and professional fulfillment.
inforcer
inforcer empowers MSPs to standardize Microsoft 365 policies across all tenants, automate environment configuration, monitor compliance in real time, and reduce risk through policy drift detection. Its reporting and automation features free teams from manual, error-prone scripting and help deliver consistent, secure customer experiences, setting MSPs up to deliver advanced AI services to their customers.
JetStream Security
JetStream Security delivers a security-first AI governance platform anchored by JetStream Blueprints™, living operational contracts that make every AI agent, model, workflow, and identity in the enterprise visible, attributable, and governed in real time. The result is a control plane that binds each AI action to a responsible owner, replaces raw credentials with virtual, revocable keys, and lets customers scale AI adoption with the accountability and control their boards, regulators, and security teams require.
Lenovo is a $83 billion revenue global technology powerhouse, ranked #196 in the Fortune Global 500, and serving millions of customers every day in 180 markets. Guided by its vision of “Smarter Technology for All”, Lenovo is executing a Hybrid AI strategy that spans Personal AI – one personal AI, multiple devices; and Enterprise AI – helping customers turn data into insights and value. This strategy is delivered through the Group’s commitment to world-class innovation and a full-stack AI portfolio, including devices (PCs, workstations, smartphones, tablets, accessories), infrastructure solutions (server, storage, edge, high performance computing and software defined infrastructure), as well as software, solutions, and services. With a global footprint spanning 21 research and development locations in 11 markets, and a global supply chain including more than 30 manufacturing sites across 10 markets, Lenovo is widely recognized for its operational excellence.
Monjur
Monjur is an AI-powered, attorney-supervised Contract Intelligence platform built for MSPs that manages contracts, reduces legal risk, streamlines operations, and compress sales cycles so clients can securely grow their business with confidence.
NetApp
NetApp is the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, helping customers turn data into a catalyst for innovation, resilience, and growth.
OptiCool
OptiCool is the leader in two-phase, close-coupled heat extraction solutions redefining liquid cooling technology for data centers. Engineered for minimal maintenance and maximum efficiency, OptiCool’s Delta4T™ technology uses refrigerant as the primary heat sink to support higher heat capacities, dynamic heat loads, and industry-leading 120kW rear-door heat exchange. Headquartered in Western New York, OptiCool is dedicated to in-house manufacturing and assembly, backed by hands-on installation and support.
Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500, enabling customers to bridge traditional and cloud-native environments seamlessly and execute on modern IT architectures.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. The ServiceNow AI Platform integrates with any cloud, any model, and any data source to orchestrate how work flows across the enterprise. By unifying legacy systems, departmental tools, cloud applications, and AI agents, ServiceNow provides a single pane of glass that connects intelligence to execution across every corner of business. With more than 100 billion workflows running on the platform each year, ServiceNow helps organizations turn fragmented operations into coordinated, autonomous workflows that deliver measurable results.
Slide
Slide is a modern, security-first Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BCDR) company built exclusively for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Founded by Austin McChord (Datto Founder & former CEO) and Michael Fass (former Datto General Counsel & Chief People Officer), Slide is led by a team of industry veterans with deep expertise in backup, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity. Built from scratch with a clean-room codebase and free from legacy technical debt, Slide delivers a high-performance, easy-to-use platform designed for the future of MSPs.
Sonar
Sonar is a global leader in AI code verification and governance, helping reduce outages, improve security, and lower costs and risks associated with AI and agentic coding. As a zero-trust, multilayered verification platform, Sonar enables organizations to securely develop at the speed of AI, and with the addition of Gitar’s AI-native code review, offers the most comprehensive way to verify code in the agentic era. A Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Technical Debt Management, Sonar is the foundation for high-performance software engineering—analyzing over 750 billion lines of code daily to ensure applications are secure, reliable, and maintainable. Rooted in the open source community, Sonar is trusted by 7 million-plus developers globally and 75 percent of the Fortune 100.
Zoom Communications, Inc.
Zoom is a system of action for modern work, turning live collaboration into completed results. From entrepreneurs to global enterprises, customers choose Zoom to seamlessly collaborate, communicate, and drive outcomes across meetings, phone, contact center, and more — all with the built-in assistance of Zoom AI Companion.
Best Channel Chief of the Year
This award will go the channel executive most deserving of recognition for achievements in the IT channel over the past 12 months as an all-around standout in channel acumen and leadership. Executives who are the top global or North America/U.S. channel leader at an IT vendor are eligible.
John Britton is a cybersecurity and channel sales executive with deep expertise in managed security services, partner strategy, and go-to-market leadership. As Vice President of Channel Sales at SilverSky, he leads national channel growth through trusted advisor ecosystems, helping partners build cybersecurity practices that align security outcomes, compliance requirements, and cost optimization. With a background spanning engineering, sales engineering, and revenue leadership, John brings a rare blend of technical credibility and commercial execution.
As the Senior Vice President of Global Partner Ecosystem, Lisa Citron is responsible for building and leading an ecosystem-centric go-to-market strategy to drive global revenue growth of F5 solutions and establish the company as a leader in multicloud application security and delivery services through all commercial routes to market. Lisa has a long history with F5, joining the company more than 14 years ago. Prior to her current role she served as Vice President of North America Channels, responsible for all regional commercial and public sector channel business. She has also held the role of Sr. Director of Cloud and Channel Sales where she helped to drive transformational change in development of the company’s public cloud go-to-market motions.
Mike Day joined GoTo in 2022 as Channel Chief, bringing with him decades of experience and a vision to transform a traditionally transactional and fragmented channel program into a true global Partner Program. His overwhelming enthusiasm has ignited new initiatives to not only enhance support to current Partners, but also expand partnerships into new global markets and selling opportunities. Mike realizes an investment in partnerships has many benefits, including authenticity for honest communications, continuous improvement with a trusted relationship, exchanging perspectives on a fast-changing market, and dedicated support and resources for Partners.
Hope Galley is Everpure’s Vice President of Americas Partner Sales and a 30-year channel veteran recognized for her close partner partnerships and ability to drive transformative growth. She previously held senior channel leadership roles at Cisco and Juniper Networks, where she helped evolve partner ecosystems toward subscription and services models. Hope joined Everpure inspired by strong partner advocacy for its partner-first strategy and industry-leading innovation. Hope continues to focus on strengthening partner profitability, scaling certifications, and preserving Everpure’s hallmark ease of doing business.
Matthew Harrell is Chief Partner Officer at Dataminr, where he’s responsible for the overall partner strategy and all indirect revenue from strategic partner routes to market. Matt brings over 25 years of experience in the cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure markets with expertise in building high-performing direct and indirect go-to-market teams. Prior to Dataminr, Matt was responsible for global channels and alliances at Cloudflare, where he was part of the executive leadership team that grew revenue from pre-IPO to $1.3B. Before that, Matt held leadership positions at Google Cloud, Symantec, Inktomi, and Advent Software.
Shiraz Hasan is Vice President of AT&T Channel Sales & Strategic Alliances, where he leads Indirect Channel Sales and Business Development for AT&T Business. In this role, he oversees partnerships with external organizations to enhance distribution channels, increase product distribution, and develop new routes to market. With 21+ years of experience spanning sales, channel sales, business development, and market development in emerging technologies, Shiraz brings deep expertise in forging alliances, shaping go-to-market strategies, and launching new ventures. He is widely recognized as a thought leader and regularly contributes insights at industry events and forums.
Jennifer Heard is an accomplished leader with over 30 years of experience leading global sales within the technology sector. She currently serves as Senior Vice President for Global Commercial Sales at Red Hat. In this capacity, she leads a partner-first sales organization to accelerate growth by leveraging their high valued, trusted ecosystem. During her time, she built their first partner driven sales strategy for Red Hat and has accelerated double digit growth three years in a row resulting in doubling their revenue, exceeding $1B business this year. Jennifer’s mission is to ensure that the commercial sales segment is a 100% indirect business.
Wade McFarland serves as Vice President of North America Channel Sales at Lenovo, where he leads the One Lenovo mission across all segments for the company’s channel partners. With more than two decades of experience in the technology industry, Wade is a seasoned sales leader and operationalist recognized for driving efficiencies, building collaborative teams, and delivering results across diverse business needs.
Gretchen O’Hara, Sage
Gretchen O’Hara is Global Channel Chief and Executive Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at Sage, where she leads the company’s global partner strategy, ecosystem, and professional services. In this role, she is responsible for building, scaling, and activating partnerships that drive growth, expand Sage’s platform, and deliver measurable customer outcomes through partners. With more than 25 years of experience across channel sales, business development, alliances, marketing, and ecosystem leadership, Gretchen brings deep expertise working with global partners to serve customers from SMB to enterprise and public sector organizations.
Tracie Orisko makes magic happen at Huntress. She is a long-time MSP Community leader with a genius zone in community-driven relationship building. Tracie has spent over a decade helping managed service providers and channel vendors connect and grow. Her strategy includes building strong teams focused on connecting MPSs to potential clients, building channel programs, introducing vendors to MSPs undergoing change to support growth, and adding new clients, headcount, and processes. She leads with an infinite mindset. When people ask her what she does all day, she responds that she helps people grow. Her focus is on taking Huntress to the next level of growth and supporting the people who can lead it.
Michael Park is a transformation executive with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations thrive through pivotal technology transitions. At ServiceNow, he has led three successive enterprise-wide transformations, each time reorienting a critical function around AI to drive growth, accelerate adoption, and deliver measurable customer outcomes at scale. As SVP, Global Partnerships and Channels, Michael is transforming ServiceNow’s global partner ecosystem into an AI-led growth engine—accelerating revenue, expanding routes to market, and repositioning partnerships as integral to how the company wins. In recognition of his impact, he was named to CRN’s 2026 Channel Chiefs list and selected among the 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs.
As the Head of Global Partner Ecosystems at Dayforce, Beata Reimer leads the company’s partner ecosystem worldwide, overseeing recruitment, onboarding, and performance across all regions and segments. Her focus is on building lasting relationships, driving demand through partners, and ensuring customer success.
Karl Soderland, Cato Networks
Karl Soderlund is the global channel chief at Cato Networks. He is a globally recognized channel leader with a proven track record of driving strategic growth and scaling partner ecosystems in cybersecurity and networking. Karl leads worldwide channel sales, accelerates partner success in the SASE market, and expands Cato’s next-generation partner program. With 30+ years of experience, Karl has shaped high-performing channel strategies at some of the industry’s most influential companies. Prior to Cato, he served as SVP of Worldwide Partner & Alliances Sales at Zscaler and SVP of Worldwide Channel Sales at Palo Alto Networks, where he consistently delivered revenue growth, operational excellence, and partner enablement at scale.
Having dedicated the last three decades of his career to the channel, Nick Tidd has established a reputation for innovative partner programs, ecosystems, marketing, distribution, platforms and operations while ensuring go-to-market initiatives and the strategic goals of all parties involved are aligned. His extensive experience and commitment to Channel advocacy have earned him consistent recognition, including being named one of the “2024 Channel Chiefs: The 50 Most Influential” by CRN. Tidd joined Zoom inspired by the company’s commitment to embracing the Channel, scaling partner programs, and building a strong partner community.
Scott Unger is an accomplished cybersecurity channel executive with more than 25 years of experience building and leading high-performing partner ecosystems for some of the industry’s most recognized technology brands. As Senior Director of Global Channel Account Management at Keeper Security, Unger leads the Channel Account Management team spanning North America, EMEA and APAC. His focus is on empowering partners to drive revenue growth, accelerate enablement and deliver world-class security outcomes through Keeper’s unified privileged access and password management platform. Since joining Keeper in 2024, Unger has transformed the company’s channel go-to-market strategy by strengthening global distribution, deepening alignment with managed service providers and refining field execution across all partner tiers.
Best Channel Achiever of the Year
The Best Channel Achiever of the Year Award honors an individual for exceptional performance, significant contributions and notable accomplishments throughout the past 12 months that were instrumental to the success of their channel-focused organization. Applicants from solution providers, technology vendors, distributors and marketplaces are eligible.
Michelle Becka is Executive Director of Experience Marketing for Ingram Micro Inc., where she leads brand, growth, and product marketing and oversees delivery of the global marketing playbook used to scale channel marketing worldwide.
With more than 28 years in the industry, Michelle is known for championing new media, modern marketing models, and high-impact experiences that drive growth. Most recently, as head of content for Ingram Micro’s Xvantage™ digital experience platform, she built and operationalized a global content strategy across regions and markets, establishing the programs, processes, and organizational structure required to scale effectively.
Jason Bystrak is Senior Vice President, Cloud & Advanced Solutions+ at D&H Distributing. In his role he oversees Advanced Solutions+, D&H’s strategic business unit that addresses increasing complexity in enterprise-grade IT. Prior to joining D&H, Jason served as the vice president of worldwide channels and distribution at Axcient (now owned by ConnectWise), a leading cloud data protection provider. In this role, he was responsible for managing and executing the company’s distribution strategy, identifying and cultivating technology alliance partnerships, and enhancing and evangelizing partner programs.
As the Senior Vice President of Global Partner Ecosystem, Lisa Citron is responsible for building and leading an ecosystem-centric go-to-market strategy to drive global revenue growth of F5 solutions and establish the company as a leader in multicloud application security and delivery services through all commercial routes to market. Lisa has a long history with F5, joining the company more than 14 years ago. Prior to her current role she served as Vice President of North America Channels, responsible for all regional commercial and public sector channel business. She has also held the role of Sr. Director of Cloud and Channel Sales where she helped to drive transformational change in development of the company’s public cloud go-to-market motions.
Mitch Diodato, Infinidat
Mitch Diodato is Infinidat’s Senior Director, Global Channel Sales. Mitch was named a CRN Channel Chief in 2026, 2023 and 2019. He was also a Finalist in the CRN Best of the Channel Awards 2025 in the category of Best Channel Chief of the Year. Mitch has been with Infinidat for over 8 years. Prior to that, he worked at Arrow ECS for 12 years. At Arrow ECS, Diodato was the national sales director for the IBM portfolio, working with top channel partners to help them increase revenue by understanding the impact of digital transformation and delivering solutions addressing customers’ technical and business requirements.
Willa Flemate is Senior Vice President of Technology Practice Sales at TD SYNNEX. Since joining the company in 1996, she has led teams across sales and management and now oversees strategic divisions spanning Consumer, Global Computing Components, Lifecycle, Print, and Collaboration (Audio Visual, Carrier, and Unified Communications). Under her leadership, these businesses have delivered strong results and expanded partner engagement through specialized sales motions and enablement. She is known for building high-performing teams, developing next-generation talent, and aligning departments to improve execution and customer outcomes.
Tim Hall is the Director of Alliances at Blackwood, where he leads alliance strategy across Federal, SLED, and Commercial markets. Joining Blackwood 14 years ago when the company had just eight employees and $6 million in annual revenue, Tim has helped drive its transformation into a cybersecurity leader surpassing $500 million in annual revenue by the close of 2025—representing more than 8,000% growth during his tenure.
Kerry Lafferty is an experienced leader in the technology sector with a strong track record of helping organizations achieve business outcomes through innovative technology solutions. Throughout her career, Kerry has built expertise in front line sales, leadership, customer engagement, team development, and strategic account management across the IT and technology services sector. Known for her collaborative style, Kerry is passionate about building high-performing teams and fostering trusted relationships with customers and partners. She combines commercial acumen with a deep understanding of customer challenges, enabling her to align technology solutions with business objectives and deliver measurable value.
Brook Lee, Rev.io
Brook Lee is Senior Director of Community at Rev.io, an AI-first SaaS company serving the MSP market with a PSA platform. She leads Rev.io’s community, content, podcast, newsletter, events, and channel enablement functions. Brook’s career spans more than 15 years in the MSP industry. She began as a technician, moved into consulting where she rebuilt hundreds of MSPs, and transitioned vendor-side at Pia, ScalePad, and Liongard before joining Rev.io in January 2026.
Saurabh Mishra brings over 15 years of proven leadership experience in building and scaling high-performing channel teams with organizations such as MuSigma and Quantiphi. In his current role as Global Channel Leader for Quantiphi’s Google Cloud business, he is responsible for developing and executing global channel strategies aimed at accelerating revenue growth, expanding market penetration, and driving profitability through a broad ecosystem of strategic partnerships. In this role, Saurabh has played a central role in expanding Quantiphi’s geographic footprint into new markets, while simultaneously deepening the breadth and depth of the company’s solution portfolio across workloads and industries.
Candace Montoya, Wildix
Candace Montoya builds and scales high-performing partner ecosystems that drive real revenue growth and predictable pipeline. With 12+ years in partner development and channel strategy—currently at Wildix, Candace’s focus is turning partnerships into consistent, repeatable revenue engines that deliver results quarter after quarter. She takes a sales-first approach to the channel, aligning the right partners, building disciplined co-sell motions, and staying focused on execution. Montoya is intentional about where she invests, prioritizing partners who are committed to growth and building joint strategies that accelerate pipeline, increase deal velocity, and expand market share.
Over the past decade, Laura has played a key role in driving channel growth through marketing, sales operations, and vendor strategy. As VP of Marketing and Sales Operations at People Driven Technology (PDT), she leads the alliances team and works closely with sales and marketing to ensure vendors are enabled to deliver meaningful business results. As a founding member of PDT’s leadership team in 2021, Laura launched the company’s partner program, which includes 300+ vendors. The program focuses on a core set of strategic vendors whose platforms are critical to PDT’s professional services offerings and long-term success, strengthening the company’s position as a trusted advisor in the IT channel.
Zuzana Piling is a global partner and ecosystem leader with 20+ years of experience driving enterprise growth across cloud, AI, and industry solutions. As Global Executive Director at Microsoft, she leads the strategic partnership with Avanade, within the Accenture – Avanade Alliance, shaping joint strategy, go-to-market execution, and co-sell motions across regions and segments. Known for building market leading, high-performing, AI-native ecosystems, she translates innovation into measurable customer and commercial impact, aligning senior stakeholders and scaling repeatable growth models globally.
Ahmet Polat is the Co-Founder and CEO of Timus, a channel-first cybersecurity company redefining how the modern workforce stays secure through cloud-native SASE and Adaptive Zero Trust. He began writing software at the age of 10 and later founded multiple technology companies before creating Timus. A software craftsman at heart, Ahmet architected the technologies behind Timus’s dynamic firewall, endpoint posture telemetry system, and continuous trust engine, reflecting his lifelong dedication to building high-performance, intelligently designed security solutions. His engineering leadership helped establish Timus as one of the fastest-growing secure access platforms in the MSP ecosystem.
Amanda Stewart is a Senior Partner Enablement Program Manager for AI-Powered Workplace at Microsoft, where she helps partners translate collaboration, modern work, Teams Rooms, and Microsoft 365 Copilot innovation into scalable customer solutions. With more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry, Amanda has built deep expertise across partner enablement, channel strategy, digital transformation, collaboration platforms, AI-powered productivity, and go-to-market execution. In her current role, Amanda works across Microsoft distribution, OEM, and reseller ecosystems to strengthen partner readiness, accelerate Microsoft Teams Rooms adoption, and help partners connect technical capabilities to business outcomes.
Best Channel Visionary of the Year – Solution Provider
The Best Channel Visionary of the Year Award celebrates a trailblazing executive with a fresh business perspective who has shown outstanding capacity to instigate channel evolution for their company and/or the channel at large over the last 12 months. Applicants from solution providers, technology vendors, distributors and marketplaces are eligible.
Jason Blevins is Chief Product Officer at TOGA Technology and serves as the strategic architect behind the company’s evolution into an AI-enabled lifecycle and digital transformation organization. With more than 20 years of experience across enterprise technology, operations, platform development, and channel strategy, Jason has helped redefine how technology services are delivered, automated, and managed throughout the IT channel ecosystem.
Joe Cicero, Security Risk Advisors
Joe Cicero is Chief Marketing Officer at Security Risk Advisors, where he leads marketing, alliances, and go-to-market strategy with a focus on building a measurable, partner-led growth engine. His work centers on aligning marketing, sales, and ecosystem partnerships to drive pipeline, accelerate customer outcomes, and strengthen SRA’s position within the Microsoft security ecosystem. Joe has led SRA’s strategic alignment with Microsoft, including entry into the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), expansion across Microsoft solution areas, and the development of structured co-sell and marketplace motions. These efforts have resulted in more than $2 million in partner investment and significant growth in Microsoft-aligned pipeline and customer adoption.
Brian has more than 30 years of experience building, scaling, and optimizing complex technology ecosystems across global enterprises and startups. He has held senior leadership roles including Head of Global Systems Engineering at HGST/Western Digital and Global Architect at VMware, where he drove major infrastructure and cloud transformations worldwide. Brian’s core expertise spans cybersecurity, enterprise infrastructure, hybrid and multi-cloud architecture, data management, and data science platforms. As a founder and executive leader of multiple tech ventures, he brings a strategic mindset and deep technical acumen to every stage of growth.
John Hurley has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry driving success for global, commercial and enterprise organizations. As chief revenue officer (CRO) for Optiv, he is responsible for the company’s revenue-generation strategy and go-to-market approach to drive sustainable growth. Hurley joined Optiv from Quantum, where he served as CRO and had oversight for a global sales organization and all routes to market. He also led Quantum’s transition from a traditional hardware business to software only, subscription and SaaS offerings.
Jim Keller, Quantiphi
Jim Keller is a distinguished technology veteran with nearly four decades of leadership experience spanning software engineering, operations, marketing, sales, and corporate leadership. He leads the AWS and Snowflake Global Business at Quantiphi, providing strategic direction for teams that deliver transformative cloud and AI solutions at scale. His work helps customers harness AWS for innovation, AI-powered automation and achieving measurable outcomes.
Corey L. Kirkendoll, MBA, CISSP, CCSA, CHP, CCIE, is President and CEO of 5K Technical Services, an award-winning, cybersecurity-led Managed Service Provider headquartered in Allen, Texas serving the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. With more than 30 years of experience in IT and cybersecurity, he is recognized for helping small and mid-sized organizations strengthen security, improve operational resilience, and adopt technology with clarity and compliance. Corey serves as Vice Chair of the GTIA AI Advisory Council and is a member of the Global Council for Responsible AI. He is a nationally recognized speaker on responsible AI, practical AI adoption for SMBs, and security-first business transformation. He is frequently quoted by leading channel publications, including CRN, and has received industry recognition for leadership and community impact.
Peter Mirabile possesses extensive experience in engineering and collaboration, currently serving as Chief Service Officer, Managed Services and previously the Director of Engineering and Collaboration and Chief Technologist at ConRes since February 2013. Prior to these roles at ConRes, Peter held multiple positions at Choate, Hall & Stewart from September 1997 to January 2013, including Network & Security Supervisor and Cisco Collaboration Engineer. Peter’s expertise encompasses technical leadership, network and collaboration architecture, identity management, disaster recovery, and infrastructure, supported by certifications as a Nortel Meridian Engineer. As the Chief Service Officer at ConRes, he leads both the engineering and Managed Services (MSP) teams.
Best Channel Visionary of the Year – Vendor/Distributor
The Best Channel Visionary of the Year Award celebrates a trailblazing executive with a fresh business perspective who has shown outstanding capacity to instigate channel evolution for their company and/or the channel at large over the last 12 months. Applicants from solution providers, technology vendors, distributors and marketplaces are eligible.
Chris Day has spent more than two decades doing one thing: building companies that change how the MSP industry operates. He founded Fully Managed in 2002, growing it to become Canada’s largest managed service provider before its acquisition by TELUS in 2022. Along the way, he identified the industry’s documentation gap and founded IT Glue — now core to Kaseya’s product stack — and co-founded ScalePad in 2015, now serving 12,000+ technology service providers globally.
Laurie Fontaine is the Senior Director of Commercial Partner Ecosystem at Red Hat. She is responsible for driving global partner strategy and growth within the commercial sales organization. Laurie is a passionate leader that brings 25 years of technology ecosystem experience which guides her partner-first approach. Prior to Red Hat, Laurie spent 20 years working for HP, HPE and Micro Focus. She led regional and global software partner and alliance sales and supporting organizations. This included channel sales, SaaS, distribution, ecosystem programs and operations. Laurie is a strong advocate for women in technology serving as a mentor and coach. She previously served as Global Chairwoman of the HPE and Micro Focus women’s employee resource group, SHINE, during her tenure.
Mukund Gopalan is the Chief Data Officer at Ingram Micro, where he leads global AI and data strategy driving the company’s evolution into a platform first, AI powered enterprise. He is responsible for building and scaling AI, data, and analytics that power intelligent automation, decision systems, and digital experiences across Ingram Micro’s global platform ecosystem. With over 30 years of experience, Mukund has held senior data and AI leadership roles at some of the world’s most technology driven companies, including Meta (Instagram), Booking Holdings (Priceline), and Grubhub.
Jimmy Hatzell, Hatz AI
Jimmy Hatzell is a technology entrepreneur with a passion for making a real difference for the MSP channel and the small businesses they serve. A Penn State University graduate in Information Sciences and Technology, Jimmy built his foundation in the MSP and cybersecurity channel — getting his start at SKOUT Cybersecurity, continuing through its acquisition by Barracuda, and later taking on a revenue leadership role at CyberQP. Along the way, he developed a deep appreciation for what MSPs need to grow and deliver real value to their clients. Those experiences led him to co-found Hatz AI in 2024 with a clear conviction — that AI shouldn’t just be for the enterprise. Hatz AI was built to give MSPs the tools they need to bring meaningful AI solutions to the small businesses in their communities.
Eric Herzog, CMO of Infinidat, a Lenovo company, has been honored as a CRN Channel Chief three times – 2025, 2022, and 2015. He has also been named as one of the CRN “Inclusive Channel Leaders” in 2024 and 2025. Herzog was the executive sponsor for IBM Storage for Sirius Computer Solutions and Mainline, as well as executive sponsor for IBM Storage and EMC at Arrow. In addition to being CMO of the IBM Storage Division, he also was VP of Storage Channels consistently achieving a yearly quota over $2B.
Gordon Lord is the Vice President of U.S. Channel Sales Organization, Secure Power at Schneider Electric. In this role, he is responsible for driving revenue, strategy and profitability across the company’s U.S. channel business, with a strong emphasis on expanding software, services and sustainability initiatives. Prior to this appointment, Lord served as Senior Director of IT Distribution & Channel Strategy at Schneider Electric, where he played a key role in shaping channel growth and go-to-market strategy.
Meredith Payne, TD SYNNEX
Meredith Payne is VP, Digital Growth & Customer Success at TD SYNNEX, with nearly 17 years of experience driving transformation across the IT channel. She leads global initiatives that modernize how partners engage, transact, and grow through digital platforms, data, and scalable customer success models. Over the past year, Meredith has been a key contributor to the creation and launch of PartnerFirst, TD SYNNEX’s unified partner experience and value proposition. This work has redefined how partners interact with TD SYNNEX from fragmented tools and transactional engagement to a connected, insight-driven ecosystem focused on growth outcomes.
Zuzana Piling is a global partner and ecosystem leader with 20+ years of experience driving enterprise growth across cloud, AI, and industry solutions. As Global Executive Director at Microsoft, she leads the strategic partnership with Avanade, within the Accenture – Avanade Alliance, shaping joint strategy, go-to-market execution, and co-sell motions across regions and segments. Known for building market leading, high-performing, AI-native ecosystems, she translates innovation into measurable customer and commercial impact, aligning senior stakeholders and scaling repeatable growth models globally.
Ahmet Polat is the Co-Founder and CEO of Timus, a channel-first cybersecurity company redefining how the modern workforce stays secure through cloud-native SASE and Adaptive Zero Trust. He began writing software at the age of 10 and later founded multiple technology companies before creating Timus. A software craftsman at heart, Ahmet architected the technologies behind Timus’s dynamic firewall, endpoint posture telemetry system, and continuous trust engine, reflecting his lifelong dedication to building high-performance, intelligently designed security solutions. His engineering leadership helped establish Timus as one of the fastest-growing secure access platforms in the MSP ecosystem.
As the Head of Global Partner Ecosystems at Dayforce, Beata Reimer leads the company’s partner ecosystem worldwide, overseeing recruitment, onboarding, and performance across all regions and segments. Her focus is on building lasting relationships, driving demand through partners, and ensuring customer success.
Mitch Saunders is the SVP of Strategic Accounts at Balata Data, where he leads key customer relationships and drives strategic growth initiatives across the organization. With more than a decade of experience in enterprise IT hardware sales and services, Mitch has built a reputation as a trusted advisor to partners and customers across the data center. Mitch combines deep knowledge of servers, storage, and networking infrastructure with a focus on customer outcomes, helping organizations reduce costs, extend asset lifecycles, and maximize the value of their IT investments.
Renu Upadhyay is senior vice president of Marketing at Omnissa, leading global marketing strategy, demand generation, product and solution marketing and brand to establish Omnissa as the leading digital work platform company. Renu is an experienced technology marketer with a deep understanding of products, industry, and customers spanning mobile, wireless networking and collaboration solutions across large and mid-size organizations.
Jana Whitcomb is a channel and alliance leader responsible for building and scaling partner-first go-to-market ecosystems within the cybersecurity industry. She currently leads channel strategy at BlackCloak, where she focuses on aligning enterprise technology partners, strategic alliances, and Private Client Services firms to support the delivery of Digital Executive Protection. Over the past year, Whitcomb was recognized as a Security Up-and-Comer by World Wide Technology following the successful launch and rapid growth of BlackCloak’s strategic partnership with the organization. She was also selected as the Security Spotlight at WWT’s company-wide all-hands meeting and featured in a joint press announcement highlighting the partnership’s impact within the enterprise cybersecurity ecosystem.
Jeremy Young is a seasoned MSP channel leader based in Austin, TX. Following early career roles at HP and Verizon, Duo Security, and Cisco, he joined Huntress Labs as employee #19 in 2019, contributing to their early growth. In late 2021, he built Blumira’s MSP channel from scratch, growing it to over 50% of company revenue within three years. Jeremy has now returned to Huntress to further their mission of providing managed security to all companies who can’t afford an elite security team in-house.
Best Emerging Leader of the Year
The Best Emerging Leader of the Year Award goes to a promising up-and-comer in the channel who is on the path to channel greatness. This may be a newer employee who has made an exceptionally strong impact in a short time or an early-career manager/executive making waves throughout the business over the last 12 months. Applicants from solution providers, technology vendors, distributors and marketplaces are eligible.
Bri Berry, TD SYNNEX
Bri Berry is the Advanced Solutions Strategic Operations lead at TD SYNNEX, where she partners closely with executive leadership to turn strategy into action across Cloud, Security, and AI. Known for her ability to align teams and deliver high-impact initiatives, she brings a strong background in Hyperscaler strategy, talent development, and go-to-market execution. Bri is also deeply committed to community and equity, having led GirlUp GVL, a local Greenville non-profit, as a Board Chair for 2 years, and acting as a champion for inclusion and belonging efforts through TD SYNNEX’s BRG Beacon as Vice Chair.
Adam Crockett is D&H’s Senior Director of Services & Advanced Solutions+. He joined the company in 2022 and quickly received accolades for his highly ethical, results-oriented leadership. He was recently promoted to a role that encompasses D&H’s Power & Networking category, as well as Professional & Managed Services and Technical Solutions. Operating at the helm of D&H’s overall Professional & Managed services strategy, Adam directs sales, customer services, operations, program development, project management, launch, expansion, and the achievement of targeted financial results. His primary responsibilities include operationalizing, enabling sales, and delivering all pre‑ and post‑sales support and services. Adam’s direction of the Professional & Managed Services team spans internally delivered Integration and Configuration Services including pre‑deployment services such as device enrollment, laser etching, asset tagging. He also oversees Project Services which covers assessments, installations, migrations, implementations, and ongoing maintenance—collectively supporting an Everything‑as‑a‑Service (XaaS) delivery model.
Duygu Erden is the Sr. Channel Growth Manager at Timus, where she helps lead channel marketing, growth, and go-to-market operations as Timus scales its SASE and Adaptive Zero Trust platform for the MSP community. She holds a Chemical Engineering degree, an MBA, and a Master’s in IT Project Management, and is currently completing marketing courses to keep sharpening how I connect strategy, execution, and growth. Before entering the channel, Duygu built an international sales career across pharmaceutical and industrial sectors in 48 countries, exceeding a $4M first year target by 215%, growing revenue 210% the following year, managing teams, launching a 13-product line, and securing 57 new clients and 8 franchise contracts. She joined Timus in 2022 as the company’s first hire, stepping into a startup environment with no team, infrastructure, or playbook. As Timus grew, she helped build partner programs, CRM, GTM pipeline, webinars, Partner Advisory Council, brand positioning, and channel marketing operations from scratch. Under her leadership, Timus grew to more than $2M ARR and earned recognition, including CRN Channel Women on the Rise and NA Spotlight Awards Finalist.
Kelsey Gipe is the Director, Channel Alliances at People Driven Technology (PDT), based out of the company’s West Michigan headquarters. Since joining PDT in 2023, Kelsey has become a pivotal connector between PDT’s sales, marketing, finance, and OEM partners—turning complex funding programs and joint initiatives into high-impact customer experiences. In her role, Kelsey steers PDT’s alliance strategy with key OEMs, leading the planning and execution of partner-backed customer events and campaigns that elevate brand visibility, accelerate pipeline, and deepen customer relationships. She serves as PDT’s primary contact for strategic sponsorships, representing PDT in sponsorship agreements, and ensures partners see clear, measurable value from each engagement.
Kayla Hanson is a results-driven sales leader with a proven track record of success in the technology industry. She joined Evolving Solutions as Director of Sales in March 2025, where she leads the company’s growth market initiatives and sales strategy, drives revenue growth, and strengthens client and partner relationships. Kayla brings deep experience in technology sales and leadership, with a proven track record of building high-performing teams, securing Enterprise Agreements, and delivering consistent year-over-year growth. Her entrepreneurial spirit and client-centric approach have been central to her success throughout her career.
Lance Lanford is the National Sales Manager at ViewSonic, where he is responsible for leading and strengthening the company’s distribution channel relationships across the US. He has spent more than 15 years in the channel industry, building his career entirely within the distribution ecosystem. Prior to joining ViewSonic, Lance held leadership roles at a distributor, where he focused on growing and managing sales teams, developing go‑to‑market strategies, and improving operational performance. In his current role, he continues to leverage this experience to design effective sales strategies while identifying and resolving operational challenges that impact partners and customers.
As Director of Global Strategic Alliances at Ingram Micro, Stacie Nadeau sets the vision and leads global strategies that strengthen partner ecosystems, influence market perception, and create long—term enterprise value. She drives the global framework for the Trust X Alliance partner community, guiding its evolution into a high—Impact ecosystem that accelerates growth, collaboration, and engagement across the IT channel. At Ingram Micro, Stacie progressed from marketing coordinator to trusted global leader, focused on brand strategy, communications, content marketing, and platform transformation. She helped launch Ingram Micro Xvantage™, the company’s digital experience platform redefining how partners engage and transact and helped shape the strategy and execution of ONE – the Innovation Summit, Ingram Micro’s flagship partner event.
As the Head of Global Partner Ecosystems at Dayforce, Beata Reimer leads the company’s partner ecosystem worldwide, overseeing recruitment, onboarding, and performance across all regions and segments. Her focus is on building lasting relationships, driving demand through partners, and ensuring customer success.
Jim Sullivan, Mitiga
Jim Sullivan is the Global Channel Leader at Mitiga, the AI-native Cloud Detection and Response leader. Jim runs Mitiga’s 100% channel go-to-market motion across North America, EMEA, and APAC, and built the function from the ground up after joining the company in early 2025. Under his leadership, Mitiga closed FY2025 with 234% year-over-year new sales growth, with every new transaction running through a partner. Jim oversaw the signing of Mitiga’s anchor solution provider relationships, including GuidePoint Security, and stood up the technology alliance program behind Mitiga’s integrations with Torq, Orca Security, Cyera, and CrowdStrike. He led the build-out of partner enablement, deal registration, MDF, and the incentive framework that the partner ecosystem now runs on.
Meryl Mary Thomas is the Global Alliance Leader at Quantiphi, an award-winning AI-native digital engineering company. Bringing over seven years of experience building and scaling high-performing alliance teams, she spearheaded the internal frameworks, processes, and AI-led workflow automations that transformed the firm’s channel strategy and operations. This strategic execution helped secure fifteen Partner of the Year Awards over the last seven years. Having joined the firm as a fresh graduate, Meryl successfully expanded Quantiphi’s alliance footprint beyond North-Am to countries across EMEA and APAC. Her leadership style centers on betting on early-career talent, establishing a dedicated talent incubator that develops young professionals into specialized channel experts who help the broader community grow
