(London, 11th February 2011) IT Europa, the leading European IT publisher and market intelligence organisation, today announced the winners of the European IT Excellence Awards 2011 - the pan-European awards event for IT and Telecoms channels. The finalists were honoured last night at a celebration dinner at The London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, London.

The European IT Excellence Awards are the only pan-European awards which recognise the crucial role that Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Solution Providers play in the delivery of real world solutions, and attracted entries from 31 countries. Entries were submitted by ISVs and resellers describing the solution provided and each had to be supported by an endorsement by the client. 62 companies from 22 countries made the finals. The winners were selected by an independent panel of consultants and editors.

The award for Channel Company of the Year, the award to the entry across all 17 categories that most impressed the judges, was won by Eurodata for a Unified Communications solution for the Rugby Football Union.

Another notable award on the night, for the European Channel Personality of the year, went to Ian Moyse, EMEA Channel Director, Webroot. This award was based on the results of a poll of 20,000 directors of Europe’s leading 8,000 channel organisations and the readership of the IT Europa’s pan-European channel news services.

The award for European Distributor of the year went to Westcon Convergence and that for European Vendor of the year was awarded to Oracle.

In congratulating the winners, Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa said: “the overall quality of entries was extremely high and demonstrated the depth of talent in the channel community across Europe. I congratulate all the winners and wish them and all the finalists every success in the year ahead”

The awards categories were divided into two main groups: ISVs and Solution Providers. The ISV categories were for software-based solutions for which the ISV had written the bulk of the solution itself. The Solution Provider categories were for complete solutions that include hardware, software, communications and services. As well as the channel categories there were two supplier categories for which channel companies nominated their distributors or vendors for the support provided through their channel programs