Credit: IDG
ARN is proud to honour Australia’s best and brightest IT channel players, recognising the achievements of an outstanding line-up of partners, start-ups, vendors, distributors and individuals in the 2020 ARN Innovation Awards.
Held as an entirely virtual event on 9 December and hosted by Australian writer and comedian Anna Daniels, the event saw hundreds of online attendees representing Australia’s channel community come together virtually to celebrate the achievements of this year’s winners.
This year’s Awards honoured the channel across 10 categories: Start-Up; Partner Value; Emerging Technology; Homegrown Innovators; Vendor Value; Distributor Value; Personal Innovation; Corporate Citizen; Channel Choice and Hall of Fame.
Among the winners were Insight, Fujitsu, NEC, Data#3, Outcomex, Invarosoft, Glüh, NEXION Networks, Brennan IT, AC3, blueAPACHE, eNerds and DXC Technology and many, many more.
The 2020 winners were selected by a judging panel of industry leaders from over 200 finalists across more than 130 organisations. These were shortlisted from more than 400 nominations by 180 organisations this year.
The online event also saw new inductees to the ARN Hall of Fame, with Dicker Data director and co-founder Fiona Brown this year being selected to join previous inductees.
Additionally, former Lenovo Data Centre Group senior vice president and chief customer officer Rod Lappin, who sadly passed away last year, was this year inducted, in memoriam, into the Hall of Fame.
Below is the complete list of winners and highly commended finalists from the ARN Innovation Awards 2020.
ARN congratulates all winners, highly commended, finalists and nominees, and thanks a judging panel comprising many of the industry’s leading influencers.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
The Emerging Technologies awards recognise partners providing customer value through new and emerging technologies.
Emerging Technologies - Cloud
Winner: Insight
Insight won this award for spearheading a cloud transformation project for a large client in the education sector that included a complex identity and access management consolidation involving the migration of over 60,000 identities and mailboxes to Microsoft Office 365, laying the foundation for collaboration and online learning support in response to COVID-19.
Emerging Technologies - Smart Technology
Winner: Fujitsu
Winner: NEC
Fujitsu won this award for its development of the core AI capability for a research collaboration aiming to use AI to detect brain aneurysms faster and more efficiently. Using expertise from global resources in Japan and coordinating with local resources in Australia, Fujitsu re-employed and redesigned an AI algorithm to scan the brain for aneurysms.
NEC won this award for its development and implementation of a frictionless facial recognition verification process for entry to the venue of its customer. These came in the form of 20 ‘kiosks’ at the venue’s entrances featuring frictionless entry technology that recognises and validates patrons within nine seconds, enhancing customer experience.
Emerging Technologies - Digital Transformation
Winner: Data#3
Data#3 won this award for the delivery of a cloud roadmap and transition for a global customer in the pharmaceuticals sector. Data#3 developed a solution to better manage user workstations and a Microsoft Windows 10 standard operating environment, with the standardised platform providing user consistency and ease of remote collaboration.
Emerging Technologies - IoT
Winner: Outcomex
Outcomex won this award for its efforts developing and deploying a major system for its customer to monitor its fleet of fridges through an IoT solution for the food industry. Named FoodDeck, the IoT solution utilises LoRa technology to communicate between Outcomex’s IP67-rated temperature sensors and a Cisco industrial gateway deployed by Outcomex.
START-UP
The Start-Up awards recognise the new and emerging companies that have impacted the ICT industry and presented opportunities for the Australian channel as a result.
Start-Up - Specialist
Winner: Invarosoft
Invarosoft won this award for its ITSM Customer Experience (ITSM CX) platform designed to help MSPs improve their customer experience (CX), a solution that has experienced key customer success internationally, selling hundreds of thousands of licences to businesses in Australia, the US, Canada, China, the UK, Europe and New Zealand.
Start-Up - Customer Value
Winner: Glüh
Glüh won this award for its B2B SaaS sales solution designed to facilitate the delivery of business technology for MSPs and VARs through a range of capabilities, providing a real-time platform that makes proposal creation and day-to-day product procurement simple for MSPs while empowering engineers to sell products easily, onsite, from their phone.
Start-Up - Company
Winner: NEXION Networks
NEXION Networks won this award for the development of its OneCloud Solution, a globally connected, fully integrated private, hybrid and public cloud service that covers all aspects of colocation, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, cloud unified communications and more, offering a fully meshed hybrid cloud solution that has the ability to scale, change and adapt in an instant.
Start-Up - Entrepreneur
Winner: Lorenzo Coppa, Glüh
Lorenzo Coppa is co-founder and CEO of Glüh. He founded City Software in 1991 and was a founding investor of City Software Business Solutions, with the group growing to an annual turnover of over $50 million. He went on to start Glüh with CTO Andrew Rauber in 2016, with the company engaging thousands of MSPs globally and being acquired by Datto in 2020.
HOMEGROWN
The Homegrown awards recognise Australian made excellence in the ICT market.
Homegrown Innovators - Service Provider
Winner: Brennan IT
Brennan IT won this award for the development of its self-service portal, a unified, user-friendly platform that makes IT management easier for customers and provides visibility of the status and level of service that is being provided to clients in real-time across networking, security, end-users infrastructure and more, whether on-prem or in the cloud.
Homegrown Innovators - ISV
Winner: iasset.com
iasset.com won this award for the development of its asset lifecycle management platform for the channel, which helps technology vendors, distributors, resellers and service providers automate and streamline their customer retention strategies, maximising the value of each asset throughout its entire lifecycle – from adoption and expansion, through to renewals.
Homegrown Innovators - Distributor
Winner: Dicker Data
Dicker Data won this award for the work its dedicated services division undertakes to deliver value to partners, including configuration and staging, along with the use of a dedicated facility at which procured products can be configured and tested prior to deployment — a program that is currently provided to over 1,000 partners annually.
PARTNER
The Partner awards recognise small, mid-market and enterprise providers for delivering innovation and value to customers across Australia.
Partner Value - Enterprise
Winner: Data#3
Data#3 won this award for its work to implement a Cisco technology-based modernised network infrastructure solution to deliver a fast, efficient wireless network across several sites of a major customer in the not-for-profit sector — just one of more than 4,600 enterprise customers to which Data#3 delivered its products and services in FY20.
Partner Value - Mid-Market
Winner: blueAPACHE
blueAPACHE won this award for the implementation of its emPOWER consumption-based model for a customer in the entertainment sector which, with blueAPACHE providing deep core services integration and key solutions recommendations, was able to quickly adapt and innovate to changing market dynamics, delivering a white labelled streaming platform.
Partner Value - SMB
Winner: eNerds
eNerds won this award for delivering a solution to its customer in the legal sector, removing its on-premises systems through the use of Microsoft cloud-based products such as Office365, OneDrive and Azure, enabling the client to quickly shift to a work-from-home environment and save over $40,000 in infrastructure and productivity costs.
Partner Value - Customer Value
Winner: AC3
AC3 won this award for the work it undertook with a large customer in the not-for-profit sector to deliver a customised solution built around ServiceNow’s Emergency Self Report application, which was released to help organisations manage their workforce during the pandemic. The solution’s launch has helped to save hours of manual labour and data entry.
Partner Value - Collaboration
Winner: DXC Technology
DXC Technology won this award for collaborating with Springday on a cost-effective ‘community’ edition of the health and wellbeing platform the two companies have created. There are now six organisations across Australia utilising the community edition, with over 9,000 employees engaging with the platform to support wellness and mental health.
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