Innovative Business, Partners Clean up in Cox, Rapidscale Awards

RapidScale and parent company Cox Business recognized a who’s-who of top partners on Monday.

The cableco and the cloud services provider it bought five years ago announced its 2022 partner awards. The honors recognize a cross-section of partners, including tech services distributors (TSDs), customer-facing technology advisors (agents), and those that performed well in cloud (for example, the RapidScale business) and connectivity (Cox).

John Muscarella, vice president for channel sales at Cox Business, thanked partners in a statement.

“Even though the channel community faced many challenges this past year, the Cox Business Channel Program beat past sales records and we owe it all to the incredible talent and dedication of our world-class partners. We extremely value the business we do together and look forward to more growth and success in the new year.”

Distributor Partners

Innovative Business won three awards, including the award for top performing overall distributor. It also won top connectivity distributor and top connectivity growth.

According to Cox and RapidScale, Colorado-based Innovative grew more than 40% in sales last year. The distributor has framed itself as a connectivity-focused company, having established direct relationships with the largest cablecos and more recently telcos.

“The team was strategic in their partnership, taking advantage of Cox Business and RapidScale’s entire ecosystem. Innovative Business Solutions successfully positioned Cox Business’ and RapidScale’s cloud portfolio as a comprehensive IT solution for partners and their customers and set a new record of the most sales in 2022,” Cox said.

Avant won top performing cloud distributor, and Telarus demonstrated the most cloud growth.

Advisor Partners

On the advisor side of the awards, Premier Technology Advisors won top performing cloud partner. The Vienna, Virginia-based consultancy drove major business through RapidScale’s managed cloud service. Cox gave a special shout-out to Jordan Solendar, who owns the business.

“Many thanks to RapidScale and Cox Business for the recognition and the fantastic partnership!” Solendar wrote on LinkedIn. In addition, ARG registered the largest cloud growth for a partner.

RapidScale’s Duane Barnes

On the connectivity/Cox side, Clear Connect bested its peers. Cox credited the company for shaking up its lead-generation strategies to find new business. In addition, Spearhead Premium Services grew the most in connectivity sales.

“I’d like to congratulate our top-performing partners who have successfully adapted to this ever-changing business landscape and excelled above the rest. We’re honored to be working alongside talented sales leaders in delivering the innovative cloud technologies that will help businesses grow,” RapidScale vice president and general manager Duane Barnes said.

RapidScale’s Bob Buchanan

Bob Buchanan, senior director of sales at RapidScale, thanked partners for how they help businesses make strategic technology decisions and grow.

“These award winners have delivered outstanding results, fully committed to our partnership, and provided immense value for their customers.”

The List

Overall Top Performing Distributor: Innovative Business Solutions
Top Performing Cloud Distributor: Avant
Top Performing Connectivity Distributor: Innovative Business Solutions
Top Cloud Growth Distributor: Telarus
Top Connectivity Growth Distributor: Innovative Business Solutions
Top Performing Cloud Partner: Premier Technology Advisors
Top Performing Connectivity Partner: Clear Connect
Top Cloud Growth Partner: ARG
Top Connectivity Growth Partner: Spearhead Premium Services

It’s fun to compare the award winners to those of 2021. For example, Telarus won top performing distributor then, and Opex Technoloiges won top performing cloud partner. Enterprise Visions and Simplify grew the most in cloud and connectivity, respectively. But Innovative won top connectivity distributor as it did in 2022, and Clear Connect won top connectivity partner as it did in 2022.

Cox last week announced the acquisition of cloud managed and professional services provider Logicworks. The latter partners closely with AWS and Microsoft Azure, giving it strong public (and hybrid) cloud environments. Cox stated its intent to pair Logicworks with RapidScale’s private and hybrid cloud expertise.