Mark Davison reports from HP’s Partner Awards – Datacentrix was the belle of the ball at a gala dinner in Rivonia last night celebrating HP’s annual Partner Awards, scooping an unprecedented eight company awards – including overall Partner of the Year – as well as two awards for outstanding individuals.
In amongst the company awards, Datacentrix’s Marc van der Poll was acknowledged as HP’s Outstanding channel technical individual for 2014, and Paul Pederson shared the honours as HP’s Outstanding sales person of the year with Kyle Haskins from SYSDBA.
The coveted Channel Executive Award was taken home by Tarsus CEO, Anton Herbst.
In the distribution category, Tarsus was named as both PPS hardware and Enterprise Group distributor of the year, while Kolok was recognised as HP’s PPS supplies distributor of the year.
Acting MD of HP South Africa, Thibault Duisson, says that despite tough market conditions, the company’s channel was instrumental in seeing it continue to maintain its dominant position in the region.
“In South Africa we are back on a growth path,” Duisson says. “Parts of the business are doing extremely well – software experiencing growth of 55% year on year and a 12% increase in PPS business are just two examples. But tonight is not about figures. It is about us saying thank-you to you, our partners, for your continued commitment and loyalty to HP.”
All the winners in the various categories were:
• Business Partner Category
• PPS Business Partner of the Year: AdvanceNet
• EG Business Partner of the Year: AdvanceNet
• Specialisation Category
• EG Networking Partner: Datacentrix
• Storage Partner: Datacentrix
• Business Critical Systems: Datacentrix
• Industry Standard Servers: Datacentrix
• Thin Client and Virtualisation: Aptronics
• Workstation: EOH Mthombo
• Retail Point of Sale: Datacentrix
• Channel MPS: Nashua
• Supplies: Waltons Stationery
• PPS ServiceOne: EOH Mthombo
• EG ServiceOne: EOH Mthombo
• Software Category
• HP Software Partner of the Year: SOFTIT
• Big Data Partner of the Year: DIGIform
• Individual Categories
• Channel’s Most Certified Individual: Nelson Gomes – Business Connexion
• Outstanding Channel Technical Person: Marc van der Poll – Datacentrix
• Outstanding Services Channel Champion: Adele Schoonwinkel – Aptronics
• Outstanding Channel Product Manager: Anne-Marie Warren – Tarsus Technologies
• Outstanding Channel Sales Person: Kyle Haskins (SYSDBA) and Paul Pederson (Datacentrix)
• Outstanding Channel Champion: Richard Blewitt (Aptronics) and Rudi Barnard (EOH Mthombo)
• Consumer Category
• PPS Consumer Partner of the Year: Incredible Connection
• Distributor Category
• PPS Hardware Distributor of the Year: Tarsus Technologies
• PPS Supplies Distributor of the Year: Kolok
• EG Distributor of the Year: Tarsus Technologies
• Alliance Category
• Most Valued System Integrator: Microsoft
• Most Valued Independent Software Vendor: Accenture
• Overall Partner Category
• PPS Partner of the Year: Datacentrix
• EG Partner of the Year: Datacentrix
• HP Partner of the Year: Datacentrix
• Special Recognition Category
• HP Channel Executive of the Year: Anton Herbst – Tarsus Technologies