Why should vendors and partners participate in the CRN Asia Channel Awards 2025?
CRN Channel Awards Asia 2025 judges share the importance of recognizing success in the channel.
Entries are still open for the CRN Asia Channel Awards 2025. The inaugural awards ceremony in Asia recognizes the success of vendors and partners in the channel, honoring them in a prestigious awards ceremony.
What makes the CRN Channel Awards special? For starters, the CRN Channel Awards are one of the most sought-after awards among the channel community in the US and Europe. Given the success of the awards ceremony in those regions, The Channel Company and CRN Asia believe the Asian region has also a strong channel community that deserves to be recognized and honored for their achievements.
With 29 categories available, the CRN Channel Awards are also unique due to its judging process. With a fully independent and rigorous judging process, the CRN Awards are among the most respected in the industry around the world and have been firmly established as the Oscars of the IT channel.
For The CRN Channel Awards Asia, a panel of 15 judges representing vendors, distributors and resellers in the region will be judging the entries. Two of the judges, who are also advisory board members for the CRN Channel Awards Asia share their views on the awards and the importance of recognizing success in the channel.
Catherine Lian, General Manager and Technology Leader, IBM ASEAN
What does being part of CRN Asia's Advisory Board member mean to you?
For me, it's a proud moment to be featured alongside other notable industry leaders in the CRN Advisory Board. Now, this is the first time the CRN Advisory Board in Asia has been set up since the site was launched in October 2024.
CRN Asia has been recognized as a publication that serves as an integral source of news and updates the channel community. Now, we at IBM strongly believe that our mission is to go above and beyond our commitment to nurturing strong, profitable and successful channel partnerships.
So, we look forward to joining the industry leaders in delivering this mission. And I'm pleased to work alongside the change makers in the tech industry to help shape the future of CRN Asia community and hopefully in the ASEAN channel ecosystem that we move along today.
Why is it important to have awards that recognize the success of the channel?
At IBM, we believe that partnerships grow with everyone and it's good to recognize and cultivate the network that we have built up.
For IBM ecosystems, we have been building up a very strong partner ecosystem throughout the many years, especially the companies that meet clients where they are. We have reached the scale that we can bring client solutions to the market faster and with exponential growth, discussion and opportunities with our channel partner.
But innovation isn't an end point, and no one can be able to drive the conversation alone. That's why we need to continue to recognize the bright ideas and the innovations that's through partnerships.
One way forward is if we actually look at how we can be able to recognize the channel ecosystem that's been built around the success of the technology platform to bring forward to the customers around the region today.
What are you looking forward to most at the awards?
Well, the awards bring together the individuals with teams that are responsible for making the Asian IT channel great. I look forward to hearing the best in the market and I think this is a good recognition as we are able to exchange ideas and better accelerate stronger partnerships across the region.
The awards do not only recognize the channel partnerships but it's also a platform for them to be able to exude out the best of their abilities to provide the channel ecosystems around the IT industry.
James Davis, Chief Strategy Officer, The TSP Advisory
What does being part of CRN Asia's Advisory Board member mean to you?
To me, it is special. The fact that there’s a lot more presence in the region that’s being quite underserve, I think it’s such a hot bed of activity. There’s going to be a lot of growth in the future and I’m excited to be part of the awards for the first time round as it is getting more visible.
I think there is so much opportunity in the region and there is so much good happening that no one hears about. I’m excited that it's going to start being shown a lot more globally.
I just want to be a part of that and also be able to help the partners in the industry in this region. We can show that we're not the third region and we should actually be the top region in the world with all the innovation that we've got, especially with all the all the technology that we utilize. And the awards are the best way to show it to the rest of the world.
Why is it important to have awards that recognize the success of the channel?
We don’t celebrate enough. In the partner land, we are always focused on the next problem because that’s what we live for. So, we don’t ever stop and reflect back on what we’ve achieved.
So being able to take time out to celebrate as an industry and celebrating the people and companies that are doing very well is amazing. Now only are we celebrating success, we are recognizing people which we need to. It shines a light on what people are doing so that others can learn from that and elevate themselves as well.
That more that we come together, the better off as a whole industry we are compared to running our own bunch of individual races.
What are you looking forward to most at the awards?
I’m really looking forward to all the success in wider Asia. It’s not spoken about enough. The APAC region in general is just not spoken enough about what’s going on.
The great things vendors are doing and the new innovation that’s happening as well as the awesome things partners are doing in the region are often very different to what’s happening in some of the other spaces.
I think it’s super exciting to start to see all these stores come to light and see these people get recognized for the awesome stuff that they’ve been doing.
The CRN Channel Awards Asia 2025 take place on the 25th of September in Singapore. Nominations close on May 30th, 2025. Click here to find out more about the awards.