This week in Washington, DC, I attended XChange 2013, the largest independent channel industry event. This annual event brings together industry experts and over 1000 solutions provider executives from across the US and Canada to discuss the changes happening in the industry and strategies for the future. It is a great chance to network and it was great to see Cisco perform so well in the annual awards once again.

Each year at this event, UBM Channel, publisher of CRN, presents the Annual Report Card (ARC) Awards, which give partners the opportunity to rate their vendors in a number of categories.

I'm so proud of Cisco's strong presence in the ARC awards. This year, we won the overall award for Converged Infrastructure Systems and all three sub-categories. We were also the overall winner in the Enterprise Networking Infrastructure category, claiming two sub-categories: product innovation and support.

Finally, Cisco was the uncontested winner for Unified Communications. CRN felt this category is significant and Cisco should still be recognized, even though no other competitors wanted to participate in this space. It's an honor to be recognized by CRN and our partners for the 10^thyear in such an important area.

We take pride in winning these awards. But these awards are thanks to you, our partners, and I wanted to make sure some of our partners had an opportunity to give you their thoughts on Cisco's awards in their own words. Here's what they had to say:

Again, thank you partners! We appreciate your participation in these awards; it gives us the resolution to continually evolve our programs and tools to provide you with the best return on your Cisco investment.