CRN’s winners

Over at CRN.com, they’ve announced the winners in the 2006 CRN Best in Show partner awards series. CRN Small Business Specialist of the Year went to U.K.-based partner firm Vigence, who used Microsoft CRM to help a corporate security concern in managing customer relationships. Vigence was founded in 2000 and specializes in Microsoft technology, customer service management and CRM. CRN MBS Partner of the Year was Feed Management Systems, which creates specialty software for managing the intricate operations associated with managing the U.S. feed supply chain.

The CRN Best of Show for Technology Innovation award winner was United Arab Emirates-based Vertscape, which received acknowledgement for its customer service application delivered on a Tablet PC. Silicon Valley, Calif.-based Unitek was named CRN Sales and Marketing Partner of the Year. Unitek is a solutions provider providing need-based IT learning to corporate clients and certification training to IT career-oriented individuals. Unitek is a Microsoft Gold partner. CRN Customer Experience Partner of the Year was Infosys, given the nod for assisting a utility company improve its handling of customer communications. Also released were the 2006 CRN Channel Champions Overall winners.

By category and company, those were:

• Color Laser Printers — HP

• Notebooks — Toshiba

• Flat Panel Displays — Sony

• UPS and Data Center Power Management Products — APC

• Enterprise WLAN products — Cisco

• Enterprise Networking Hardware — Cisco

• Databases — Oracle • VoIPý Technology — Cisco

• Server Class Disk Drives — Seagate

• Small Business Networking Hardware — Cisco

• Systems & Network Management Software — Microsoft

• Network Security Hardware — McAfee

• Client Security Software — Trend Micro

• Network Security Software — Trend Micro

• Application Integration Middleware — IBM

• SMB WLAN Products — Cisco

• Advanced Desktops And Workstations — IBM

• Email/Collaboration Software — Microsoft

• Network Operating Systems — Sun Microsystems

• Network Storage Hardware — HP, IBM (tie)

• External Storage Backup Subsystems — HP

• Volume Servers — Sun Microsystems

• Midrange Servers — IBM • Storage Management Software — HP

• Business Software Suites — Microsoft

• Client and Server Processors — Intel

CRN is an analyst firm for solution providers and technology integrators that acts as an advocate for and voice of the Channel. CRN now claims a readership of 117,000 channel professionals. CMP Media is the firm’s media offshoot.