Meet the Middle East’s channel movers and shakers you need to know.

The year 2012 was marked by an ever-accelerating pace of technology innovation from next-generation smartphones and tablets to mind-bending breakthroughs in cloud computing, virtualisation and networking.

It was also a year that saw soaring big data technology investments propelled by the social networking revolution. A record number of systems integrators in the region added new mobile, cloud, virtualisation and networking services and products to their portfolios.

With new technology ramping up the market, this year’s ‘Channel Champions Top 50’ list has devoted even more of those executives pushing the innovation envelope. This year’s list includes not only the 50 most influential executives taking technology to new heights, but dwells deeper into understanding these executives in their quest to promote innovation in the regional channel and thereby making game-changing contributions.

And no channel management is complete without a strong partner base. The Channel Champions Top 50 executives making the channel leaders list in 2013 are the who’s who of channel management – heading up the partner programmes that resellers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region depend on to run their business. This year’s honourees are navigating a maze of business model and technology shifts, and trying to make sure their company’s channel partners succeed.

While the market and technology landscape continues to evolve, the main objectives of the Channel Champions Top 50 list have remained unchanged.

As pointed out, the year 2012 was a year in which the technology and business transformation propelled by advances in cloud computing, virtualisation and networking made it more critical than ever for courageous executives to step up with game-changing contributions to partners.

It was also a year that saw the global PC market slump with mobile devices (tablets and smartphone) sales soaring. With that in mind, this year’s list aims to shine the spotlight on not only the most influential executives in the MENA channel today, but on the channel pioneers, sales and services leaders, the channel strategists, as well as the innovators, mavericks, next-gen channel leaders and up-and-comers.

This year’s list sees Lenovo emerge so strongly in the PC plus era to displace HP from the number one spot in the global PC market, a position HP held for the past seven years.

So, how did we choose these top 50 executives? Before compiling this list of the who’s who in channel management, we set ourselves a few ground rules as a starting point. All the executives featured in this year’s list are in full-time employment with vendors and distributors, the very companies that resellers engage with on a daily basis.

For the purposes of uniformity, the Channel Champions Top 50 this year, like was in 2012, features executives from the UAE although almost all have much broader responsibilities covering the MENA geography and markets in Eastern Europe, parts of Western Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

While we have only managed to publish 50 executives from the regional channel, we are also aware of the fact that there are more ‘channel champions’ beyond this list. Nonetheless, the compilation offers a solid guide to the movers and shakers shaping the regional IT channel.

In the pages that follow, Channel Middle East  features the Channel Champions Top 50 for 2013.