Credit: ARN / IDG
START-UP INNOVATION
PRODUCT
Finalists:
- Backup365
- Invarosoft
- Lynkz
- MicroGifts
- The U Group & Co
- Wondaris
Highly Commended: Invarosoft
Winner: Lynkz
Lynkz wins this award for the creation of its camera-detection business intelligence platform, PolyVision, and its continuous dedication to developing analysis of artificial intelligence datasets across a spectrum of technologies. Its partnership with one customer saw PolyVision deployed to help one of Australia’s most critical industries continue to deliver safely and efficiently during the past two years.
SECTOR
Finalists:
- Acusensus
- Archistar AI
- Education360
- SolBox
- Umlaut
Winner: Education360
Inspired by its founder's wife's experience as a primary educator, Education360 has sought to help schoolteachers get to grips with wide variety of data and translate it into something meaningful for their students. Now available in A/NZ and North America, Education 360's platform allows teachers and school management to track and analyse data, manage projects and collaborate with their peers.
CUSTOMER VALUE
Finalists:
- Arinco
- Baidam Solutions
- BluBiz Solutions
- Otto IT
- Nueva Solutions
- Smart-Ui Group
Highly Commended: Smart-Ui Group
Winner: Baidam Solutions
Since its founding in 2018, Baidam Solutions has risen to prominence through a combination of cyber security deployments and ongoing outreach work to help Indigenous Australians build long and successful careers in the IT industry. Drawing upon the ASD’s Essential Eight framework, Baidam continuously develops cloud-native solutions for a host of customers, both local and overseas.
ENTREPRENEUR
Finalists:
- Chris Padgett & David Lee - Arinco
- Amit Sethi - BluBiz Solutions
- Xara Tran - Champions of Change
- Andre Morgan - CMD Solutions
Winner: Andre Morgan - CMD Solutions
As co-founder and co-CEO of CMD Solutions, Andre has spearheaded the company's growth from three people to 100 while seeing its revenue grow to match. Now, with six AWS competencies under its belt and an award for AWS Consulting Partner of the Year, CMD Solutions continues to flourish under Andre's thoughtful and inspiring leadership.
TECH INNOVATION
Tech Innovation recognises partners leveraging established and emerging solutions to enhance customer innovation levels, underpinned by deep levels of expertise and specialist services.
CLOUD
Finalists:
- ASI Solutions
- Cognizant
- Data#3
- Exigo Tech
- Insight
- Kablamo
- Katana1
- KPMG
- Lancom Technology
- Linktech Australia
- Oreta
- Rubicon Red
- Tecala Group
Highly Commended: Kablamo
Winner: Data#3
As one of Australia's oldest Microsoft partners, Data#3 continues to play at the highest level in the local cloud space, offering advanced expertise across Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics. Last year, Data#3's cloud revenue surged thanks to its continued focus on customers across all stages of their cloud journey.
SECURITY
Finalists:
- Arinco
- Exigo Tech
- Operational Systems
- Privasec
- Quorum Systems
- Tecala Group
Highly Commended: Quorum Systems
Winner: Tecala Group
Tecala Group wins this award for its work implementing a range of security products and services for a customer with a deep pool of sensitive client data, relieving it of the day-to-day responsibilities for identifying and responding to threats and incidents.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
FInalists:
- ASG Group
- Cevo
- Cognizant
- Dynamic Aspect
- Evolution Business Systems
- First Focus
- Jasco Consulting
- Orro
- Outcomex
- Powernet IT Solutions
- PwC
- TechSpecialist
Winner: Outcomex
Outcomex wins this award for delivering an IoT initiative for a government customer alongside Cisco Meraki to collect data across public services using a combination of networking hardware, 4G connectivity and artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. This resulted in near-perfect counting and recognition accuracy.
EMERGING
Finalists:
- Accenture
- Arinco
- Coevolve
- DiUS
- Eliiza
- Konica Minolta
- KPMG Origins
- LAB3
- Lynkz
- Outcomex
- Tata Consultancy Services
- Tecala Group
Winner: Accenture
Accenture wins this award for the development of its HR communication tool myBuddy during the COVID-19 pandemic, which involved the scaling and evolution of existing tools to solve emerging challenges. Today, myBuddy supports over 500,000 people daily in 41 countries and has been adopted by clients to solve engagement and productivity problems.
HOMEGROWN ISV
Finalists:
- Airlock Digital
- Atlastix
- Centorrino Technologies
- Cloudcase Software Solutions
- CloudWave
- Complexica
- Cyara
- Eftpos Australia & Slalom
- iasset.com
- meldCX
- OnePlace Solutions
- Wiise
Highly Commended: iasset.com
Winner: Centorrino Technologies
Centorrino Technologies wins this award for its Bloum platform, which provides artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered insights to extract past performance and student growth areas, as well as plucking out suggested interventions for students at risk.
AUSTRALIA-WIDE INNOVATION
Australia-wide Innovation recognises partners delivering customer innovation headquartered outside of the two most-populated metropolitan areas in the country. This is partner is a market-leading specialist which thrives in challenging end-user environments, sparking new ideas and outcomes through an unconventional approach to technology consulting and implementation. Note: This award is open to partners headquartered outside of Sydney and Melbourne.
NATIONAL
FInalists:
- ASG Group (Perth, Western Australia)
- Exposé (Adelaide, South Australia)
- Forward IT (Belconnen, ACT)
- Operational Systems (Adelaide, South Australia)
- Pursuit Technology (Canberra, ACT)
- Rubicon Red (Brisbane, Queensland)
- Subnet, Core Technology Partners, Kaine Mathrick Tech & OPC IT (AU-wide)
- TelcoDataCloud (Adelaide, South Australia)
Highly Commended: ASG Group
Winner: Rubicon Red
Rubicon Red wins this award for its work with a customer to redesign and migrate all of its legacy interfaces over to a critical platform powered by MuleSoft, Solace and StreamSets solutions.
REGIONAL
Finalists:
- Area9 (Darwin, Northern Territory)
- Calibre One (Mawson Lakes, South Australia)
- Colton Computer Technologies (Orange, New South Wales)
- Essential Tech (Brisbane, Queensland)
- Int Tec Solutions (Mildura, Victoria)
- Lindentech (Perth, Western Australia)
- TechConnect IT Solutions (Hope Island, Queensland)
- TasmaNet (Hobart, Tasmania)
Highly Commended: TasmaNet
Winner: Area9
Area9 developed an automated data warehouse and business intelligence reporting system for a long-time customer to remedy labour intensive business processes that required constant review. As a result, the customer saved more than half of one full time employee’s entire workload.
DISTRIBUTOR INNOVATION
Distributor Innovation recognises distributors spearheading ecosystem innovation and growth through transformative approaches to vendor engagement and partner enablement, spanning the core categories of Hardware, Software, Specialist and Creativity.
HARDWARE
Finalists:
- Dicker Data
- Leader
- Westcon-Comstor
Winner: Dicker Data
SOFTWARE
Finalists:
- Dicker Data
- Ingram Micro
- Nextgen Group
- Rhipe
- Westcon-Comstor
Winner: Nextgen Group
SPECIALIST
Finalists:
- ACA Pacific
- Bluechip Infotech
- Exclusive Networks
- Mia Distribution
- Nextgen Group
- SecureSoft Distribution
- Synnex
- Westcon-Comstor
Highly Commended: Westcon-Comstor
Winner: Exclusive Networks
CREATIVITY
Finalists:
- Aria Technologies
- Dicker Data
- Exclusive Networks
- Ingram Micro
- Nextgen oSpace
- Orca Technology
- Tech Data
- Westcon-Comstor
Winner: Ingram Micro
VENDOR INNOVATION
Vendor Innovation recognises vendors helping partners deliver transformative solutions and services to customers, operating market-leading approaches to engagement and enablement across the key technology segments of Cloud, Security, Hardware, Software, Networking, Collaboration and Specialist.
CLOUD
Finalists:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- Informatica
- Kong
- Microsoft
- OVHcloud
- Veeam Software
- VMware
Highly Commended: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Winner: Microsoft
SECURITY
Finalists:
- BlackBerry
- ESET Software
- ExtraHop
- Fortinet
- LogMeIn (LastPass)
- Microsoft
- Proofpoint
- Sophos
- Virsec Systems
- WatchGuard Technologies
- Webroot
- Zscaler
Winner: Fortinet
HARDWARE
Finalists:
- Cisco
- Dell Technologies
- Dynabook
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- HP
- Lenovo
- Vertiv
- Zebra Technologies
Highly Commended: Cisco
Winner: Lenovo
SOFTWARE
Finalists:
- Avaya
- Cisco
- Citrix
- Datto
- GitLab
- NICE
- Schneider Electric
- Veeam Software
- VMware
Winner: Veeam Software
NETWORKING
Finalists:
- Cisco Meraki
- Cradlepoint
- NBN Co
- Telstra
- VMware
- Vocus
Highly Commended: VMware
Winner: Cisco Meraki
SPECIALIST
Finalists:
- Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
- BlackLine
- Cohesity
- ConnectWise
- Datto
- Huawei Technologies
- Nintex
- Schneider Electric
- StorageCraft (an Arcserve company)
Winner: ConnectWise
COLLABORATION
Finalists:
- 3CX
- 8x8
- Access4
- Avaya
- Cisco (Webex)
- Dubber
- MaxContact
- RingCentral
- Poly
Winner: RingCentral
HALL OF FAME
ARN Hall of Fame 2021 Inductee: Bevan Slattery
Bevan Slattery has been building IT and telecommunications businesses for more than 20 years, first establishing a number of prominent tech players in the Australian market and eventually expanding his efforts to Singapore and Hong Kong, the USA and Europe, and further afield.
Since co-founding data centre, cloud and connectivity provider iSeek in the late 1990s, Bevan has firmly established his position as one of the Australia's pre-eminent entrepreneurs, populating the market with a continuous stream of successful companies, predominantly in the technology space.
Over the years, Bevan has been involved – as founder or co-founder – in the creation of the likes of PIPE Networks, NEXTDC, SubPartners, Superloop, Megaport, Cloudscene, SUB.CO and FiberSense – to name just a few.
With no fewer than five IPOs on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Bevan and his related companies have raised well over $1 billion in capital and have become the basis for some of the Asia Pacific region’s most prominent internet infrastructure operators.
ARN Hall of Fame 2021 Inductee (in memoriam): Nick Russell
Whether as an inspiring entrepreneur and leader of people, or as king of the one-liners with a love of tattoos, Nick Russell was a generous soul admired and adored within the Australian channel.
The centrepiece of Nick’s industry success was the creation of Katana1, built in partnership with close friend and co-founder Ross Ogilvie. Rarely has a company displayed such courage, confidence or charm and, perhaps crucially, had the deep levels of expertise and wit to pull off such an approach.
Aside from co-founding a leading technology provider in the form of Katana1, Nick’s unforgettable impact on the Australian market stretched back to the early 2000s, starting out as an account manager at Sun Microsystems before advancing into sales management roles at NetApp, followed by a short director stint at Bridge IT Solutions.
Following Nick’s tragic passing earlier this year, an outpouring of affection flooded an industry mourning a unique and unforgettable man – one with knowledge and kind-heartedness in equal abundance.
ARN congratulates all winners, highly commended, finalists and nominees and thanks a judging panel comprising many of the industry’s leading influencers.
