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We cover tech industry newsmakers every day here at ChannelPro. Once a year we recognize an elite subset for having a significant, positive impact on the SMB channel in the last 12 months. Here’s our latest collection of honorees.

Where They Come From
The 2022 ChannelPro All-Stars were selected by ChannelPro’s editors based on their assessment of the year’s biggest vendor-related storylines, as well as input from a variety of outside experts and channel partners. The All-Stars list varies in size annually, and has neither a minimum nor maximum length.

  • ChannelPro SMB All-Stars

    • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Question: How do you cram more L3 cache into a processor without increasing its die size? Answer: Stack a bunch on top of the CPU instead of alongside it. Sounds simple? It isn’t, which is why AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology is a genuine chip design breakthrough. Available today only in a single Ryzen 7000 SKU, you can bet it will make its way into more processors soon, resulting in big performance gains for gaming, high-performance computing, and data center hardware.

        Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is a semiconductor designer and manufacturer. Its processor and graphics technology power a wide range of computing devices.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Call them our “go giver” All-Star. Augmentt mostly creates big tools for big cloud management tasks, like backing up SaaS apps. Since July, however, it’s also been creating small tools for targeted cloud management tasks, like monitoring alert emails from cloud vendors—and then giving them away. Not as part of a “freemium” ploy to inspire upgrades, mind you, but simply as a gift to the channel. The result is a growing collection of “free forever” solutions that are yours to use at no cost for as long as you like without enduring endless sales pitches.

        AUGMENTT Technology Inc. is a Software-As-A-Service Application Management platform provider.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Cisco’s Takeback and Reuse program makes recycling used hardware rather than dumping it in a landfill both free and easy. Its Environmental Sustainability Specialization, in turn, makes participating in Takeback and Reuse not only simple for partners but profitable as well. Meet the deliberately light requirements and you’ll get up to seven incremental discount points on new devices every time customers return old ones. Designed to get more channel pros engaged in Cisco’s ambitious race to net-zero emissions, the new credential turns returning unneeded hardware into a good deed for the planet that’s a moneymaker for resellers too.

        Cisco Systems Inc. is a provider of IP-based networking and other products related to the communications and IT industry.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        It’s been one of 2022’s hottest ideas in cyber insurance, and these two companies were its godparents. Trend Micro can now help businesses get desperately needed coverage more easily and cost-effectively by automatically feeding security telemetry to insurer Cowbell Cyber. Augmentt, BlackPoint Cyber, ConnectWise, IGI CyberLabs, and others have forged similar pacts with insurance providers this year, and we hail them all for finding high-tech answers to an urgent problem, but Trend and Cowbell got there first.

        Cowbell Cyber provides cyber insurance for small and medium-sized enterprises, utilizing AI for continuous risk assessment and continuous underwriting while delivering policyholders a closed-loop approach to risk management with risk prevention, risk mitigation, incident preparedness and response services.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. By now, most channel pros know the NIST Cybersecurity Framework’s five pillars by heart. Cyberint, however, thinks there just might be a sixth category worth adding to the list: predict. The Israeli startup’s offering combines threat intelligence, digital risk protection, and attack surface management into a solution that can pick up the first stirrings of online danger deep in the dark web before it materializes, giving you precious time to inoculate clients from it in advance. Available in an outsourced delivery model, the system democratizes a feat that would otherwise obligate channel pros to build a pricey SOC or buy a crystal ball.

        Cyberint is a software company that offers cyber threat intelligence solutions for cybersecurity companies.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        SASE technology is a potent tool for delivering secure connectivity to cloud-dependent hybrid workforces. So why is it so rarely used by SMBs? Cytracom thinks the problem is complexity and the fix is ControlOne, an integrated, end-to-end solution that meshes normally discrete technologies like SD-WAN, web content filtering, and intrusion prevention with a cloud-hosted foundation, custom-engineered bridge appliances, software-based agents, and drag-and-drop design tools to give channel pros everything they need to connect offices and remote workers in multiple places securely, centrally, and simply.

        Cytracom gives small businesses the opportunity to experience the quality and features of big business Hosted VoIP. Cytracom is 100% partner driven, and its model is built entirely around the channel.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        What’s in a name, the Bard asked. For GoTo, the company known until February as LogMeIn, everything. Its new moniker is but part of a strategic, channel-focused overhaul that included launching an all-new partner program and rolling out a big new remote management tool called GoTo Resolve. Pair that system with the GoTo Connect unified communications-as-a-service solution and you’ve got an easy, integrated way for VARs and other recurring revenue newbies to make voice and collaboration services their entry point into managed services.

        GoTo, formerly LogMeIn Inc., is a flexible-work provider of software as a service (SaaS) and cloud-based remote work tools for collaboration and IT management, with products including GoTo Connect, GoTo Resolve, Rescue, Central, and more,

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Combine a keen appreciation for the power of integration with strategic vision and a whole lot of elbow grease and you get Synthesize, Gradient MSP’s hub for connecting managed service providers, cloud services, and PSA platforms in ways that streamline normally painful, labor-intensive processes. So far, that’s meant reconciling cloud bills and converting alerts from security, BDR, and other vendors into tickets, but there’s more to come. The company has ambitious plans to turn Synthesize into a powerful engine for optimizing a long list of other processes that cost MSPs time, and therefore money.

        Gradient MSP "solves problems that keep MSPs from reaching their full potential, and removes barriers channel vendors face." It's platform, Synthesize, provides pain-free billing reconciliation to MSPs who reconcile services via a PSA.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Hewlett Packard Enterprise was firmly on the leading edge back in 2019 when it announced plans to offer everything it makes as a service within three short years. It signaled just how serious it is about bringing the channel along on that journey in June when it launched Partner Ready Vantage, a new program designed to help partners seize growing demand for end-to-end, usage-based solutions. Whether you’re a solution provider, VAR, or software developer, your member benefits will include everything you need to build, sell, and support outcome-oriented solutions profitably using HPE’s GreenLake platform and Aruba SaaS offerings.

        Technology innovation that fosters business transformation.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Continuous vulnerability management is good. Managed detection and response is good. Put them together in an integrated service offering priced at monthly, MSP-friendly rates, as IGI CyberLabs (makers of the Nodeware vulnerability management system) and SOCSoter did early this year, and you get something great that’s never been available to SMBs or the channel pros who protect them before: immediate third-party analysis and remediation of vulnerability reports, in real time, 24/7.

        IGI CyberLabs is an innovative technology company building cybersecurity solutions that meet market demands. It is a subsidiary of the IGI corporation, that is focused on security software and platform development, while IGI Cybersecurity is focused on delivering managed security services.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Sure, specialized cores have been available in ARM processors for some time, but despite the popularity of devices bearing Apple’s M1 and M2 chips, way more people use x86 platforms to power through the workday than ARM platforms. Hence the importance of Intel’s accomplishment when it built “Performance-cores” and “Efficient-cores” into its 12th Gen Intel Core processors, enabling the legions of people who rely on what remains the world’s mainstream laptop operating system—Microsoft Windows—to enjoy faster speeds and longer battery life.

        Intel Corp. is the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, developing advanced integrated digital technology.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        You can’t be an MSP these days without enduring constant online attacks, and you can’t be an MSP period without remote access software. So who better for MSPs to get their remote access software from than a security vendor? Enter Keeper Security and its Keeper Connection Manager, a solution that provides secure, single-click remote access to desktops, laptops, servers, and other resources in a “zero-knowledge” model that hides credentials from both technicians and end users. The new system is exactly what besieged MSPs need right now, and a powerful alternative to RDP and VPN for their customers too.

        Keeper Security focuses on password management and security software to protect businesses and consumers from data breaches.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        You can buy desktops as a service. You can buy laptops as a service. Surely you can buy high-performance computers as a service too, right? Not so much, it turns out. Or at least that was the case until earlier this year, when Lenovo introduced TruScale High Performance Computing as-a-Service, the first pay-per-use, on-premises offering built specifically for HPC hardware. The scalable, private cloud purchasing option gives scientists, engineers, and others a cost-effective way to have capacity they don’t yet need ready and waiting for immediate use without paying for it in advance.

        Lenovo is a computing manufacturer of business and consumer PCs, servers, workstations, and mobile devices.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Microsoft isn’t in the habit of selling you an application like Microsoft Teams when it could sell you a suite of applications like Microsoft 365 instead. Yet when the company realized that many of the smallest small businesses need something more robust than the free edition of Teams but less expensive than a Microsoft 365 Business plan, it created Teams Essentials, a new, stand-alone edition of the hugely popular product that puts its communication and collaboration power within practical reach of nonprofits, microbusinesses, and other organizations with much to do and little to spend.

        Microsoft Corp. is a provider of software, services, and solutions that enable SMBs to grow by leveraging powerful, affordable technologies such as cloud computing.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        To an ever-increasing extent, most of what SMBs do that matters happens in the cloud. So you just knew that the brand-name makers of old-school, device-focused RMM solutions would start offering cloud management solutions too … eventually. Kudos to N-able for being the first of the bunch to get there this August with its Cloud User Hub. In addition to being a versatile multitenant tool for administering and securing Microsoft 365 accounts, users, and licenses, the new system just may hold a land speed record for quickest time to market—it shipped mere weeks after N-able’s July acquisition of cloud management vendor Spinpanel.

        N-able empowers managed services providers (MSPs) to help small and medium enterprises navigate the digital evolution. With our growing portfolio of security, automation, and backup and recovery solutions—and extensive, partnered support—we help MSPs deliver exceptional value and achieve success at scale.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        So yes, everything that matters happens in the cloud these days. But while that makes endpoints less important, it doesn’t make them unimportant. To the contrary, it makes ensuring that they’re patched and secure before they get anywhere near the cloud more important than ever. Which is why we commend Nerdio’s decision to build physical device management services from Microsoft Endpoint Manager into its Nerdio Manager for MSP product, and give channel pros who use Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop to deliver work-from-anywhere services greater control over a critical component of the AVD stack in the process.

        Nerdio is an Azure deployment, pricing, packaging, management, and optimization solution for MSPs and enterprise IT professionals.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        An estimated 75 million organizations worldwide could be using QuickBooks Online, but only 8 million are. Pax8 is the first distributor ever to give channel pros a shot at that giant opportunity by adding the much-admired Intuit product to its steadily growing portfolio. That was probably enough on its own to get the company an All-Star plaque, but we’ve also been impressed with how swiftly its 2021 acquisition of managed services consultancy Sea-Level Operations has turned Pax8 Academy into one of the industry’s deepest libraries of on-demand and instructor-led education resources.

        Pax8 is a cloud commerce marketplace focused on the delivery of cloud-based solutions to a global network of channel partners and their customers.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        It sounds more like magic than IT, but it’s not. SkyAMP’s patented technology boosts Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular signals dramatically without a battery, solar panel, or electrical cable. In fact, the company’s compact devices have no power source whatsoever. Yet place one almost anywhere and it’ll begin boosting wireless signals in buildings with interference problems, extending the reach of networks on college or corporate campuses, freeing motorists from cellular dead zones, and more for as little as $449.

        SkyAMP is a manufacturer of patented, unpowered wireless signal amplifiers.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        Continuous vulnerability management is good. Managed detection and response is good. Put them together in an integrated service offering priced at monthly, MSP-friendly rates, as IGI CyberLabs (makers of the Nodeware vulnerability management system) and SOCSoter did early this year, and you get something great that’s never been available to SMBs or the channel pros who protect them before: immediate third-party analysis and remediation of vulnerability reports, in real time, 24/7.

        SOCSoter is a complete, ready-to-deploy cybersecurity platform built specifically for small to mid-sized companies.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        It’s been one of 2022’s hottest ideas in cyber insurance, and these two companies were its godparents. Trend Micro can now help businesses get desperately needed coverage more easily and cost-effectively by automatically feeding security telemetry to insurer Cowbell Cyber. Augmentt, BlackPoint Cyber, ConnectWise, IGI CyberLabs, and others have forged similar pacts with insurance providers this year, and we hail them all for finding high-tech answers to an urgent problem, but Trend and Cowbell got there first.

        Trend Micro develops Internet content security and threat management solutions.

      • ChannelPro SMB All-Star
        2.5GBase-T became a standard in September 2016. Why in the world did it take five more years before someone put it to work in affordable network gear? It’s a mystery for sure, but we applaud Zyxel for leading the way with the MG-105 and MG-108, multi-gigabit unmanaged switches with five and eight ports, respectively, that at long, long last have put 2.5GBase-T’s superior speed at the disposal of small and midsize businesses.

        Zyxel Communications Corp is a manufacturer of DSL and other networking devices.

  • ChannelPro Not for Profit All-Star

    • ChannelPro Not for Profit All-Star
      • ChannelPro Not for Profit All-Star
        You can do a lot with a smartphone, but it takes a full-blown computer to get ahead in today’s online economy. Yet 36 million Americans don’t own one at present. Digitunity (the name combines “digital” and “opportunity”) is working to shrink that number by matching donated and refurbished computers with people in need. The Corporate Pledge to End the Digital Divide it issued this year is a call for business, government, education, philanthropy, and community leaders to join Digitunity and its national collective of nearly 1,500 frontline, community-level organizations in the effort to close the digital divide. Want to join in? Visit https://digitunity.org/take-the-pledge/.

        Digitunity's mission is to eliminate the technology gap so that everyone can thrive in a digitally connected society.

  • ChannelPro Lifetime Achievement All-Star

    • ChannelPro Lifetime Achievement All-Star
      • ChannelPro Lifetime Achievement All-Star
        Paul Dippell

        ChannelPro All-Star awards had always gone to businesses until 2019, when we named ConnectWise founder Arnie Bellini the very first Lifetime Achievement All-Star. This year, for only the second time ever, we’re bestowing the same honor on Paul Dippell. As founder and former owner of Service Leadership, the managed services consultancy he sold to ConnectWise in 2021, Dippell produced two of the industry’s most rigorous growth-growing resources: the Service Leadership Index, a deep pool of real-world performance metrics from thousands of MSPs; and SLIQ, an accompanying self-serve web application that measures users against top-performing peers and provides a roadmap for improving operational maturity and profitability. Together, both tools have helped countless MSPs replace opinion and conjecture with objective, actionable facts when it comes to building a thriving practice.

2022 ChannelPro SMB All-Stars

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