Kathy Gibson reports – The industry came out to find out which vendors are the resellers’ favourites in the annual Channelwise Awards
The Channelwise Awards, now in their eighth year, have become South Africa’s leading barometer of how resellers view and collaborate with their vendor and distributor partnres.
Close to 2 000 reseller partners cast their votes for their favourite vendors, across nine categories.
The winners are as follows:
Servers
Enterprise servers – Dell EMC won with 30% of the vote, followed by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Lenovo;
Midrange servers – Dell EMC with 32%, then Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Lenovo; and
UPSs – APC with 31%, followed by Eaton and Mecer;
Storage
Storage subsystems – Dell EMC won with 26%, followed by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and IBM;
Optical disk drives – Transcend with 18%, followed by Dell EMC and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise;
Solid state disk drives – Samsung with 16,5%, then Seagate and Transcend;
Backup solutions – Seagate with 18%, then Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Western Digital; and
Cloud storage – Google with 24%, then OneDrive and iCloud.
Networking
Enterprise-level switches and routers – Cisco won with 25% of the vote; followed by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Dell EMC;
Routers and access points – Cisco with 20%, then Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and D-Link; and
Cabling – Datanet with 17%, then D-Link and TP Link.
Printers, peripherals and consumables
Laser printers and MFPs – HP Inc with 34% of the votes, followed by Canon and Brother;
Inkjet printers and MFPs – HP Inc with 34%, then Canon and Brother;
Projectors – Epson and Acer share the award, each with 26% of the vote, followed by Dell EMC;
Monitors – HP Inc with 34,3% of the vote, then Dell EMC and LG;
Smartboards – HP Inc with 22%, followed by Samsung and Dell EMC; and
Printer consumables – HP Inc with 33%, then Canon and Brother.
End user devices
Personal computers – HP Inc won with 26% of the vote, followed by Dell EMC and Lenovo;
Workstations – Dell EMC with 27,9% of the vote, followed by HP Inc and Lenovo;
Thin clients – HP Inc with 30%, then Dell EMC and Lenovo;
Gaming PCs – Asus with 20%, then Dell EMC and MSI;
Notebooks – HP Inc with 28%, the Dell EMC and Lenovo;
Gaming notebooks – Dell EMC with 23%, then Asus and MSI;
Tablets (business) – Lenovo with 32%, then Apple and Acer.
Software
Security software – Kasperksy Lab won with 21% of the vote, followed by Symantec and ESET;
Accounting software – Sage Accounting with 28%, then Sage Pastel and Quickbooks;
ERP software – Microsoft Dynamics with 25%, then Oracle and SAP;
Virtualisation software – Vmware with 37%, then Microsoft and Veeam;
Customer relationship management software – Microsoft CRM with 34%, then Sage CRM and SAP;
Business intelligence software – Microsoft BI with 38%, the IBM – Watson and SAS Institute;
Artificial intelligence software – Microsoft with 27%; then IBM Watson and Huawei; and
Graphics design and CAD software – AutoCAD with 32%, then Adobe InDesign and Corel.
Components and accessories
Bags and sleeves – Targus won with 39% of the vote, followed by Lenovo and Everki;
Headphones – Logitech with 21% of the vote, then JBL and Skull Candy;
Keyboards, mouses, joysticks and VR headsets – Logitech with 33%, followed by Microsoft and Gigabyte;
CPUs and GPUs – Intel at 51% and AMD at 47%;
Graphics cards – Gigabyte with 31%, then MSI and Asus;
Memory – Kingston at 32%, the Transcend and Samsung;
Disk drives – Seagate with 29%, then Western Digital and Samsung; and
Sensors – Raspberry Pi with 19%, then Microchip Technology and Silicon Labs.
Consumer electronics
Smartphones – Samsung won with 31,4%, followed by Apple and Huawei;
Tablets (consumer) – Samsung at 31,1%, then Apple and Lenovo;
Drones – DJI with 24,3%, then GoPro and Parrot;
Speakers and sound systems – Logitech with 17%, then JBL and Bose; and
Televisions and smart TVs – Samsung at 36%, followed by HiSense and LG.
Cloud computing
Public cloud provider – AxizCloud won with 18% of the vote, followed by Tarsus Cloud on Demand and First for Cloud;
Vendor-neutral data centres – Teraco with 29%, then Telkom/BCX and Vodacom Business;
IaaS providers – Internet Solutions with 23%, then Teraco and MTN;
PaaS providers – Internet Solutions with 22%, then Teraco and MTN;
SaaS providers – Microsoft with 35%, followed by Veeam and Oracle;
Cloud management – Microsoft Azure at 32%, then VMware and Google Cloud Platform; and
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) – Vmware with 27%, then Dell EMC and Nutanix.