Telesystem-AppSmart

Telesystem named AppSmart, the B2B technology marketplace company, its master agent of the year. The recognition honors AppSmart for earning the most recurring revenue in 2020.

AppSmart last month announced its acquisition of Georgia-based master agent MicroCorp. The purchase brought AppSmart’s total of acquired master agents to four: MicroCorp, Converged Network Services Group (CNSG), Telegration and WTG.

Read more about the honor.

MicroCorp

Speaking of MicroCorp recognized ACC Business, Comcast Business, Spectrum Business, Hypercore Networks and Lumen Technologies for performing at the highest level in 2020.

Although Hypercore has only existed since 2016, the provider has made a big splash with MicroCorp. The agency credited Hypercore for participating in the “largest SD-WAN deal in channel history.”

The distributor also recognized Windstream Enterprise as its most improved provider, in addition to honoring some individuals. Melissa Rubsam, MicroCorp’s strategic marketing manager, earned “Employee of the Year.”

Get the full scoop on MicroCorp's top vendor partners.

Intelisys-8x8

Intelisys sales partners named 8x8 their favorite supplier. That marks a second win in two years for the UCaaS provider.

Partners also chose Spectrum and RapidScale as their top cable and cloud providers, respectively.

Find out more about Intelisys' honors.

Gartner’s Top Network Service Providers

Gartner recognized top providers in its latest Magic Quadrant for managed network services. The report focuses on providers that deliver network operations center life cycle services. These companies assume responsibility for operating WAN, LAN and WLAN networks.

Gartner's UCaaS Leaders

Cisco, 8×8, Microsoft, RingCentral and Zoom are all listed as leaders on Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for UCaaS. The research firm added both Vonage and Zoom to its 2020 Magic Quadrant. It didn’t remove anyone from last year.

Google, LogMeIn and Mitel are challengers, and Gartner lists Fuze as a visionary. Vonage, Star2Star, DialPad, Windstream and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise are niche players.

According to Gartner, in 2022, 74% of organizations will move at least 5% of their normally full-time, onsite workers who switched to working from home temporarily, into permanent remote-working positions. In addition, by 2023, more than one-half of large organizations will connect to cloud providers using direct cloud connectivity from their WANs. That’s up from 10% in 2019.

More on Gartner's UCaaS Magic Quadrant is here.

Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks recently named World Wide Technology (WWT) its top member of the NextWave resale program. It’s a repeat performance by WWT, which started a strategic relationship with Palo Alto in 2015.

Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks recently honored Jenne, ScanSource and other high-performing distributors. The vendor handed out 26 awards to its top channel partners. Distributors, service providers, VARs and other partners featured among the top Extreme partners.

Jenne won Americas Distributor of the Year for a consecutive time. ScanSource, which did not appear in the 2019 awards, earned the Momentum Distributor of the Year award for the Americas.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile took a clean sweep in the J.D. Power 2020 Business Wireless Satisfaction Study. T-Mobile earned the best scores in all three categories: large enterprise, SMB and very small businesses.

The wireless industry performed well as a whole. In fact, it tallied record scores amid a pandemic.

“Wireless has been a lifeline for business customers during the pandemic," said Ian Greenblatt, J.D. Power’s managing director of technology, media and telecom. "And carriers really rose to the occasion by reliably delivering superb performance in connectivity, call quality and customer service."

Read more about how T-Mobile scaled the wireless mountain.

Jay Bradley Honored

Intelisys' Jay Bradley

Longtime Intelisys president Jay Bradley celebrated a major honor from partners. The industry’s biggest cable providers recognized Bradley with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cable Awards virtual event.

Bradley was Intelisys' president for nearly 18 years and now serves as an adviser to the business.

Craig Schlagbaum, senior vice president and channel chief of Comcast Business, said the cable executives unanimously picked Bradley for the inaugural award. He called Bradley “instrumental in the growth of the industry.”

A whole bunch of master agents and agents got recognition also.

ACW Awards

• Kelli McMillan, founder of Xposure.
• Kris Blackmon, chief channel officer at JS Group.
• Maureen O’Connell, Comcast‘s director of partner sales for the Northeast.
• Shannon Orr, Avant‘s national channel manager.

In addition, the ACW announced its fourth annual ACT Awards.

The 2020 ACT Award winners are:

• Carolee Cannata, national channel development analyst at TPx and co-chair of the sponsorship committee.
• Morgan Granfield, channel sales manager at Digital Realty, and member of the event planning and communications committees.
• Bridget Kang, partner development manager at Telarus, and co-chair of the membership committee.

Masergy-Intelisys

Masergy honored Intelisys as its top-selling master agent partner. The software-defined networking company recognized 13 companies in its annual partner awards. These partners made the list because of their sales achievements in fiscal year 2020.

Intelisys won master agent sales, as it has since 2017. Moreover, it triumphed in the UCaaS and SD-WAN categories.

Paul Constantine, Intelisys’ executive vice president of supplier services, praised the value of Masergy’s UCaaS and SD-WAN portfolio. He also credited Masergy for building an “innovative” partner program.

This is where to learn more about Masergy's awards.

Telarus

Telarus honored Mitel, CenturyLink, now Lumen Technologies, and several other suppliers for their 2019 performance.

The Utah-based master agent doled out dozens of awards to agents and suppliers. Lumen led all Telarus suppliers in overall sales, followed by AT&T.

Telarus COO Richard Murray said Lumen has “seen a massive uplift” in larger customer deals. Lumen holds a decorated history with Telarus, having won best overall supplier the previous year.

Find more honorees here.