Product Power in the Channel

Given the dominance of certain vendors in the channel, its no surprise that the winners of the 2006 eWEEK Channel Products of the Year are some of the best-known companies that have deep roots in the channel.

What is surprising is how close the race was between the products entered into 26 different categories. That might suggest that the level of competition between vendor products in the channel is pretty high these days, but a look deeper into the numbers finds an interesting trend: The more familiar solution providers were with a product, the less impact they felt that product would have on the market as a whole.

Click here for descriptions of the 26 product categories.

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Nevertheless, many solution providers still tended to vote with their wallets. In fact, if it were not for the loyalty of solution provider partners that still see high profit potential in its products, Microsoft would not have been able to carry the day in five separate categories.

But other factors can also come into play when it comes to rank. For example, Hewlett-Packard carried away the most wins thanks to the loyalty of a lot of its channel partners, who credited the company with having a much stronger presence in the channel these days.

Click here to view the Channel Products of the Year survey.

Other big winners included Cisco and Symantec, which each won three categories while tying with each other in the network security software category. Symantecs margin of victory in each of three categories it won outright was much narrower than most people would have suspected, while Cisco needed to rely on doing well with solution providers that saw strong profit potential in its products to carry the day against a host of rivals breathing down its neck.

Read here the methods eWEEKs Channel Insider used to determine the rankings.

IBM, meanwhile, didnt fare as well as one might have expected, winning only one category, while companies such as Lenovo, APC, SAP, Viewsonic, VMware, Novell and McAfee all managed to take home individual honors that reflected particular strengths they have in a given category.

Congratulations to all entrants for developing products that solution providers could rally behind in 2006. As you can see from the scoring, there are lots of fans of products in the channel.

Click here to view the reader survey data.