While everybody likes to talk about what the channel should be doing now or what they might do someday for the channel, not everyone actually follows the rhetoric with action. So it's important to recognize and appreciate the people in any given year who actually put what they preach into practice.
With that in mind, The Channel Insider, the sister news site of eWEEK Strategic Partner, this month debuted a new feature. It is our first annual 12 Who Made a Difference list, and it recognizes the executives who put strategies in place that brought material benefits to the channel in the form of new programs or initiatives designed to help solution providers evolve their business models.
The people on the list aren't necessarily channel chiefs or big-time CEOs, but rather individuals who have made a tangible difference in the channel.
Here are the list and brief profiles of the accomplishments that earned these individuals their place on the list:
Bill Botti, Alternative Technology
John Callies, IBM Global Finance
Justin Crotty, Ingram Micro
Mike Cullen, N-able Technologies
Gary Gillam, Xerox and CompTIA
Steve Houck, EMC
Taylor Macdonald, Sage Software
Edison Peres, Cisco Systems
Mike Ross, RSA Security
John Thompson, Hewlett-Packard
Shirley Turner, Intel
Charles Weaver, MSP Alliance
Channel News and Analysis 
