Canalys announces winners of EMEA Channel Partner Awards 2016

Canalys has announced the winners of the Candefero Channel Partner of the Year Awards 2016 for EMEA. These awards recognize high achievement by the region’s channel partners in particular areas. The winners were honored on stage in Barcelona on Wednesday, 5 October at the Canalys Channels Forum EMEA, in front of 1,000 leading channel partners, distributors and vendors from 38 countries across the region. The event featured packed keynote sessions, more than 3,000 one-to-one meetings and a spectacular gala dinner. The entire event was managed using Canalys’ custom-developed events app. The app is now available for vendors and channel partners to use for their own partner events.

Canalys Chief Analyst Alastair Edwards said, ‘This year’s channel partner awards highlighted the incredible depth of talent in the EMEA channel. Partners who were recognized demonstrated strong revenue and profit growth, and also showcased innovation and transformation in their organizations.’

The Candefero Channel Partner of the Year Awards recognize outstanding performance in specific areas: Revenue Growth, Innovation and Transformation, Cloud: Software, Cloud: Managed Services and Infrastructure Growth, together with an overall Channel Partner of the Year award. Winners were selected from the many nominations received by a panel of Canalys analysts, who took into consideration how each partner had made sustainable investments for the future, its performance, its demonstrated expertise and the resulting business value generated for its customers.

Softcat was announced as the overall Candefero Channel Partner of the Year, recognizing the company’s excellence in terms of its strategy, financial performance and management strength, as judged by a panel of senior Canalys analysts.

Commenting on Softcat winning the award, CEO Martin Hellawell said, ‘We are very proud to have been recognized by Canalys, especially in our first year as a public company. We continue to grow profitably and invest in new technologies and services. We are continually adding to the Softcat family, growing to 1,000 employees from 400 five years ago.’

The winners in the other categories were announced as follows:

• Econocom for Revenue Growth.
• Realdolmen for Innovation and Transformation.
• Redstor for Cloud: Software.
• Cancom for Cloud: Managed Services.
• XEFI (CFI) for Infrastructure Growth.

Richard Plottier, Strategic Alliances Director Group for Econocom, winner of the Revenue Growth award, said, ‘Econocom is delighted to receive this. We have achieved double-digit growth, increasing our revenue to more than €2.3billion and growing our profit by 116%. Our goal is to continue to understand the business needs of our various contacts, address all these different points of view, and devise and build innovative, agile digital solutions tailored to our clients’ needs.’

Jelle Vervaeke, Head of the Products & Licensing Group at Realdolmen, winner of the Innovation and Transformation award, said, ‘We have transformed from a traditional hardware integrator to focus on delivering professional services and deeper customer engagement.’

Chris Sigley, General Manager at Redstor, winner of the Cloud: Software award, said, ‘We are 100% cloud-focused and provide global back-up and disaster recovery solutions to more than 40,000 customers worldwide. We develop our own software and services and are delighted to have been recognized as the winner of this award.’

Rudolf Hotter, COO, Cancom, winner of the Cloud: Managed Services award, said, ‘We are very pleased to win this Canalys Partner of the Year award for the second year running. We have continued to make great strides in our cloud and managed services business. It is increasingly driving our group profitability, which has shown double-digit growth rates year on year.’

Sacha Rosenthal, CEO of Groupe XEFI, formerly CFI Maintenance Informatique, winner of the Infrastructure Growth award, said, ‘XEFI is delighted to receive this award. We have focused on developing our infrastructure and data center business. All around France, we are developing the number of local agencies dedicated to small businesses. We have seen a 30% increase in revenue and 200% growth in our profit since last year.’

About Canalys

Canalys is an independent analyst company that strives to guide clients on the future of the technology industry and to think beyond the business models of the past. We deliver smart market insights to IT, channel and service provider professionals around the world. Our customer-driven analysis and consulting services empower businesses to make informed decisions and generate sales. We stake our reputation on the quality of our data, our innovative use of technology and our high level of customer service.

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