Today at VMware Partner Exchange 2011, VMware, Inc, the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, acknowledged its global ecosystem partners for outstanding achievements and performances during 2010. This year’s VMware Partner Network global awards were presented by Paul Maritz, chief executive officer; Carl Eschenbach, co-president, Customer Operations; and Doug Smith, vice president, Global Partner Strategy and Operations during an awards ceremony at VMware Partner Exchange 2011.

This year marked the first time that VMware partners were able to directly participate in the awards consideration process, with VMware receiving more than 500 applications from partners in 32 countries for awards in 15 categories.  Each applicant was also required to submit customer wins and references that correlated to the category in which they applied.  Regional award winners were announced at Partner Exchange and were then considered finalists for the global awards.

“VMware’s annual Partner Exchange event brings partners from varied industries, countries and companies together for six days of networking with peers, training and education,” said Smith. “We continually strive to deliver the right mix of programs and tools so our partners can help customers continue on the path to IT as a Service. We are proud of the tremendous accomplishments made by this year’s winners throughout 2010 and we look forward to continuing our work with them in the coming year to make the enterprise hybrid cloud real for all our customers.”

Global award winners were recognized in 15 categories:

Academic Partner of the Year
Phoenix Software (EMEA)

Application Platform Partner of the Year
Sonda (Americas)

Business Continuity Competency Partner of the Year
Dimension Data (APJ)
*Dimension Data won Global Solution Provider of the Year in 2010

Desktop Competency Partner of the Year
INX (Americas)
* INX won Americas Solution Provider of the Year in 2010

Distributor of the Year
Ingram Micro (Americas)

Education Partner of the Year
Global Knowledge USA (Americas)
* Global Knowledge won Global Education Partner of the Year in 2010

Government Partner of the Year  
World Wide Technology (Americas)

Infrastructure Virtualization Competency Partner of the Year 
Beijing PowerUnique Technologies Co. (APJ)

Partner Executive MVP
Roland Koenig (EMEA)

Service Provider Program (VSPP) Partner of the Year
Colt Technology Services (EMEA)

SMB Partner of the Year
CDW (Americas)
* CDW won Americas SMB Partner of the Year in 2010

Solution Provider of the Year
ATEA (EMEA)

Systems Integrator of the Year
CSC (Global)
* CSC won APJ Systems Integrator of the Year in 2010

Technology Innovator of the Year
F5 (Global)

Vertical Application Partner of the Year
Siemens Medical (Global)