Hosted Network shortlisted at the CRN Channel Awards Australia 2026

CRN Australia has announced the shortlist for the first CRN Channel Awards Australia, and Hosted Network has been named a finalist in two categories.

Hosted Network is a finalist for Vendor of the Year, and our CEO Ben Town is a finalist for Channel Leader of the Year. Winners are announced on 17 September at the Hyatt Regency in Sydney.

About the awards

This is the first year CRN has run an awards program built specifically for the Australian channel. There are 31 categories covering vendors, distributors, MSPs, MSSPs and solution providers, plus categories for security and AI work, ESG projects and newer companies.

CRN received enough entries for MSP of the Year and Solution Provider of the Year that they split both into three headcount brackets, so smaller shops aren’t being measured against 200-person operations.

Entries were judged on their contribution to the Australian channel rather than on revenue or product specs.

Vendor of the Year

There are three finalists in the category: Hosted Network, Kaseya and Twilio.

We’re a wholesale provider and we only sell through partners. No end customers, no direct sales, and no situation where we end up competing with the MSPs who resell us. Everything we do reaches the market through someone else’s business.

Which means a shortlist like this comes down to whether the Partner Portal is quick to use, whether support answers when you call, and whether the margin still stacks up two years in. Partners are the only people who can judge that, so we’re reading the shortlist as a sign that enough of you would.

Channel Leader of the Year

Ben Town is one of ten finalists, alongside leaders from Cisco, CrowdStrike, Nutanix, Kaseya, NinjaOne, Proofpoint, GoTo, Wasabi and Cloudera.

Most of that list is global vendors. Ben is there for an Australian wholesale business that grew because MSPs chose to build on it.

Come and say hello

The awards night is on Wednesday 17 September at the Hyatt Regency in Sydney. If you’re going, find us on the night.

And if you’re an MSP working out who to build your connectivity, cloud or voice stack on, we’re happy to talk it through any time.