Walter Van Uytven receives Lifetime Achievement Award
With a standing ovation from some 650 attendees, Walter Van Uytven received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Channel Awards. Sven Vanasch, head of sales and marketing at Arrow ECS, was voted Channel Personality of the Year.
It was only the second time in 24 editions that the Channel Awards advisory board presented a Lifetime Achievement Award. The first went to Patrick Steenssens, senior vice president Benelux at TD Synnex, in 2021. Entrepreneur Walter Van Uytven started his own computer business in Leuven in 1994 and founded the Belgian Informatics Association BIASS in 2002. In the summer of 2009, he was poached by Proximus to lead the SME market and the ICT channel, but quickly rose to become VP Cloud. In 2014, he surprised everyone by leaving Proximus to lead Awingu. Eight years later, it was successfully sold to Correl.
Arrow ECS won several prestigious awards. Sven Vanasch received the award for Channel Personality. The Best Marketer award went to Eric Toussaint and Best Young Talent went to Maelle Cosemans. The award for Best Distributor also went to Arrow.
Best Account Manager went to Sophy Asselman of TD Synnex.
Microsoft was Best Vendor, Connexion was the best reseller and TD Synex also received a second award for the best Channel programme.
The Collaboration Awards, in which various parties worked together (vendor, distributor and reseller), were new and successful. The 28 projects submitted were assessed by prominent figures from the Antwerp Management School (AMS). There were five categories.
Best Cloud Collaboration went to AWS, Ingram Micro and Cloudar for Group K.
This strong collaboration helped companies adopt AWS in a scalable and cost-efficient manner, with accelerated cloud transformation and sustainable growth in the Benelux.
Best UC & AV Collaboration went to Barco, Samsung, Logitech, TD Synnex and Techworks. Thanks to this collaboration, an integrated AV solution was realised for modern workplaces, with seamless hybrid meetings.
Best ESG Collaboration was won by Microsoft, DXC and Cegeka for the Flemish Government. The Flemish Enforcement Platform created a centralised and secure digital enforcement model that strengthens governance and improves social services.
Best Security Collaboration went to Zscaler, SentinelOne, Westcon and Secutec.
A phased Zero Trust approach secured a Belgian financial institution against data breaches, simplified security and ensured compliance at scale.
