Three hundred and forty-seven attendees honoured Australia's leading IT companies at the James Bond-themed 3rd IT & T Awards in a distinctly un-Caribbean atmosphere on Sydney's Jones Bay Wharf 28 October.
Even the sultry 1962 jazz of Monty Norman's Dr No theme couldn't warm the glittering throng, many of whom were photographed by black-garbed spies as they stepped outside to admire two classic Aston Martins displayed on the pier.
Authorities have reason to believe special agents were there to gather information about the winners, who have shown themselves to be particularly influential in Australian affairs and innovative technologies – rather like 007 himself.
Reseller of the year went to Harris Technology, who won ahead of PC Range and Oz Technologies, first and second runners-up respectively. Other nominees included Alphawest, Brennan IT, Concorde Computers, Commander, Dimension Data, Next Byte and Leading Solutions.
Novell won the accolade for best networking solution from runners-up IBM and Telstra and a list of illustrious channel nominees that included Damovo, Data#3, KAZ, NetStar and NSC.
Microsoft was judged to have the best integrated database management solution for enterprises, ahead of Oracle and IBM. Nominated system integrators included Dimension Data, CSC and Ascend Business Solutions.
The Best Broadband Offering award was taken home by Internode. Runners-up were iiNet and Netspeed. Also nominated were NetSpace, Personal Broadband Australia and Unwired.
Altech and Express Data were pipped at the post by Tech Pacific for the distributor of the year prize, won from a large field of nominees including Alepine, Bluechip Infotech, Lan 1, Ingram Micro and ChannelWorx.
Microsoft was awarded a prize for its 'creative and accessible' partnership program, ahead of HP and Sun Microsystems. Also nominated were Acer, Oracle, SAP and Toshiba.
Microsoft also won the professional IT services provider of the year title, ahead of Datacom Australia and KAZ Group. Other nominees included Accenture, BeTrusted and Consulting Insights.
Peter Kazacos, the joint managing director of KAZ, was inducted into the IT&T Awards' Hall of Fame as a champion of the vendor community.
For a full list of prizes, categories and nominees see http://www.itnews.com.au/itt/winners.aspx