Top Partners: Best of the Best

You work hard all year selling telecom and IT products and services — and sometimes it not only pays off in terms of compensation, but also awards.

With the Channel Partners Conference & Expo and many other springtime events in the rearview mirror, we’ve compiled this list of industry honors from the first half of the year.

Click through our gallery to see which partners – large and small – earned recognition from the biggest suppliers and master agents in the business for reaching and surpassing sales goals in 2016.

They truly are the top partners, the cream of the crop … the best of the best. Congratulations!

Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.

Vonage Business named Telarus, the master agent and national distributor of cloud, voice and data services, as its top producer of new channel-partner revenue.

Vonage’s indirect channel program has more than 30 channel managers nationwide to support its partners and help them to leverage its UCaaS offerings for businesses.

Click here to read more about Telarus’ win.

CenturyLink, at its Ascend partner event, handed out awards to the top partners across its various alliance groups.

The traditional CenturyLink Channel Alliance (CCA) program honored Acuity as its Velocity Partner of the Year and Intellys as its Up and Coming Partner of the Year. Master-agent giant TBI took home hardware as CCA’s Retention Partner of the Year, while Spearhead garnered recognition as Innovation Partner of the Year.

Master-agent Intelisys was crowned CCA’s Partner of the Year overall.

See who else got top honors at Ascend.

TPx Communications, the managed services carrier formerly known as TelePacific, recognize a handful of partners – several of them masters –  based on new billed revenue for 2016. In ranked order, TPx President’s Club winners – announced at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo – were Sandler Partners, Bridgepointe Technologies, Intelisys, Aligned Communications, PSI Networks, Telarus and Blue Front Technology Group.

It was Telarus’ first appearance in TPx’s President’s Club.

Learn more about the winners here.

Level 3 Communications, which is being purchased by CenturyLink, recognized Avant Communications, Intelisys and two other master agents and distributors as the most valuable partners in its channel program.

Avant and Intelisys joined MicroCorp and PlanetOne Communications as the top partners in Level 3’s “Elite” program. They get membership on Level 3’s channel partner advisory board and earn incremental market development funds as a result of their recognition.

Learn more about Level 3’s top partners here.

Master agent Intelisys said that LAM Technology is the ninth sales partner to achieve Platinum Partner status in the master agent’s channel program. To commemorate the accomplishment, Jay Bradley, Intelisys’ president, presented LAM with a trip for four to anywhere in the world — all expenses paid.

LAM is a cloud and telecommunications agency and consulting firm that provides carrier-agnostic services to meet individual customer requirements. The company specializes in cloud, WAN, colocation, mobility, integration/deployment, VoIP and UC.

Not familiar with LAM? You should be — learn more here.

AT&T’s ACC Business honored four master agents at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo for billing more than $1 million per month in 2016.

The telecommunications giant recognized PlanetOne Communications, Intelisys, Telarus and MicroCorp as members of the ACC Business Million Dollar Club. It’s PlanetOne’s first appearance in the elite group.

Read the full list of ACC honorees here.

Peak 10 recognized AlphaServe, Avant, CDW, Intelisys and RoundTower Technologies through its Double Black Diamond Awards.

The awards, handed out during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, highlight partner success in generating business opportunities and “delivering reliable technology solutions based on Peak 10’s [IT infrastcucture] services.”

Click here to learn more about Peak 10’s awards and winners.

They are the 25 companies – agents, VARs, dealers, systems integrators, MSPs, solutions providers and consultants – recognized at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo for well-rounded portfolios and proven track records of providing holistic technology solutions.

To see whom we honored, and to learn how you can take home a Channel Partners 360° Business Value Award, click here.

Avaya, which is going through bankruptcy proceedings, honored IPC, Alliance Data, STL Communications, Windstream and ConvergeOne as winners of the Avaya Partner Awards at its Engage conference in Las Vegas.

The awards, presented to channel and vendor partners, recognize partners across five categories, including: innovation, networking, midmarket, cloud and services; as well as an overall award for Partner of the Year.

Get the full scoop on the Avaya awards here.

CoreSite Realty Corp., the provider of data center and interconnection solutions across the U.S., presented its awards for 2016 sales performance at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo.

They included Stratacore, CDW, Intelisys, ColoPeople and Data Mob.

Learn more about why they took home hardware here.

Digium announced its annual Pinnacle Partner award winners based on their annual sales from 2016, and “commitment to excellent customer satisfaction.”

The winners “consistently put their customers first, while successfully growing revenues” with the implementation and delivery of Digium’s Switchvox business communications offerings, Switchvox Cloud (hosted services), and Asterisk custom communications services, according to the company.

Read the full list here.

Equinix, the data-center services company, named Datapipe its Americas Partner of the Year, for being “an outstanding achiever in customer acquisition and global expansion of Platform Equinix” in 2016.

Synoptek won the company’s New Partner of the Year for the Americas honor “for its overall contribution to Equinix’s business.”

Read more here.