We’re proud to announce that GAM Tech has been recognized as one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed IT Companies for 2025 — our fifth consecutive year receiving this prestigious national distinction.
The award, presented by TechnoPlanet Productions at the annual awards gala in Toronto on February 5, 2026, identifies the top 50 managed IT companies in Canada based on a comprehensive evaluation of business practices, leadership, strategy, and client satisfaction. Out of more than 1,500 qualified Canadian IT companies that participate in the assessment process each year, only 50 earn the designation.
For GAM Tech, this milestone represents more than an industry accolade. Five consecutive years of recognition is a reflection of the systems, culture, and operational discipline we’ve built across our company — and a signal to our clients and prospective clients that we’re a managed service provider built for the long term.
In this article, we’ll break down exactly what this award measures, why it matters when you’re evaluating IT partners, and what has enabled GAM Tech to sustain this level of performance year after year. Whether you’re a current client, a business owner exploring managed IT options, or simply curious about what separates a top-tier MSP from the rest, this is the full story behind the recognition.
Canada’s 50 Best Managed IT Companies is an annual awards program run by TechnoPlanet Productions, a North American channel marketing and communications company that has been active in the technology industry for over 25 years. The program is specifically designed to identify and recognize managed service providers (MSPs), value-added resellers (VARs), IT solution providers (ITSPs), and managed security service providers (MSSPs) that demonstrate best-in-class business practices.
The key distinction that sets this award apart from other industry rankings is what it measures. Most “top MSP” lists rank companies by revenue, headcount, or growth rate. Those metrics tell you how big a company is, but they don’t tell you how well it’s run. TechnoPlanet’s assessment takes a fundamentally different approach: it evaluates the quality of your business operations, not the size of your balance sheet.
The evaluation is based on a comprehensive online assessment containing approximately 230 questions, developed over more than a decade with input from over 40 channel business coaches. The assessment is updated every year to reflect the latest business conditions, industry trends, and best practices in the managed IT space.
Companies that complete the assessment are scored across 12 core categories of business operations. These categories cover every major dimension of running a managed IT company:
Business Vision and Strategy — Does the company have a clear, documented strategic direction? Is it aligned with market trends and client needs? How does the leadership team translate vision into actionable plans?
Leadership and Management — How effective is the company’s leadership structure? Are decision-making processes clear? Is there a succession plan and a culture of continuous improvement at the management level?
Human Resources — How does the company attract, develop, and retain talent? What training and professional development programs are in place? Is there a healthy workplace culture supported by employee engagement data?
Sales Process — How mature and repeatable is the company’s sales methodology? Are sales processes documented, measured, and continuously refined?
Marketing Process — Does the company have a strategic marketing plan? How does it generate leads, build brand awareness, and communicate its value proposition in the market?
Help Desk and Support — How does the company deliver day-to-day support to clients? What are the response and resolution time benchmarks? How is quality monitored and improved?
Business Operations — How well-documented and efficient are the company’s internal processes? Are there systems in place for quality assurance, project management, and operational scalability?
Supplier Strategy — How does the company select, manage, and optimize its vendor relationships? Is there a strategic approach to technology partnerships?
Product and Service Strategy — Is the company’s service portfolio aligned with market demand? How does it innovate and evolve its offerings over time?
Intellectual Property — Does the company have proprietary tools, frameworks, or processes that create competitive advantage?
Financial Management — How disciplined is the company’s financial planning, budgeting, and reporting? Is there a clear path to sustainable profitability?
Customer Satisfaction — How does the company measure and improve client satisfaction? What feedback mechanisms are in place, and how are they acted upon?
The assessment uses a sophisticated algorithm to benchmark and grade responses based on data collected from thousands of submissions and industry intelligence. Companies that score in the top 50 nationally earn the designation. There is no tiered ranking within the Top 50 — you either make it or you don’t. The size of the company is less important than the quality of its practices.
An independent panel of eight judges evaluates each submission, providing an objective and rigorous evaluation process that companies can trust as a legitimate benchmark of operational excellence.
If you’re a business owner or IT decision-maker evaluating managed service providers, you’ve probably noticed that every MSP claims to be the best. They all promise 24/7 support, proactive monitoring, and enterprise-grade security. So how do you separate the companies that actually deliver from those that simply market well?
Third-party recognition based on rigorous, standardized evaluation is one of the most reliable ways to cut through the noise. And that’s exactly what the 50 Best Managed IT Companies award provides.
When you sign a managed IT contract, you’re not just buying a set of technical services. You’re entering into a partnership with a company that will have access to your most sensitive data, manage the infrastructure your team depends on every day, and serve as your first line of defense against cyber threats. The quality of that partnership depends on how well the company behind it is run.
The 12 categories evaluated in the Best Managed IT Companies assessment directly correlate with the outcomes you care about as a client. Strong help desk processes mean faster response times when something goes wrong. Effective human resources practices mean your account is managed by skilled, well-supported technicians who stay with the company long enough to actually learn your environment. Sound financial management means the company will be around in five years, not just five months.
Any company can have a strong year. Market conditions align, a few big contracts land, and the numbers look great. But one strong year doesn’t mean a company is well-managed — it might just mean it got lucky.
Five consecutive years of recognition tells a different story. It means the company has sustained operational excellence through changing market conditions, team growth, technology shifts, and the everyday challenges of running a business. For GAM Tech, those five years have included significant growth, geographic expansion across nine Canadian cities, achieving SOC 2 and B-Corp certifications, and navigating a post-pandemic landscape that fundamentally changed how businesses think about IT.
Consistency at this level requires more than good intentions. It requires systems, accountability, and a culture that prioritizes doing things the right way even when no one is watching.
This is worth emphasizing because it’s a critical differentiator. Many MSP ranking lists are essentially revenue leaderboards. They tell you which companies are the biggest, but not which are the best-run. A company can have $100 million in revenue and still deliver terrible client experiences if its internal operations are chaotic.
The Best Managed IT Companies assessment doesn’t care about your top line. It cares about your processes, your strategy, your leadership, and your ability to deliver consistent value. That makes it one of the most meaningful benchmarks a managed IT company can earn, and one of the most useful signals for clients evaluating their options.
GAM Tech first earned the 50 Best Managed IT Companies designation in 2021. At the time, we were a growing MSP with a strong presence in Western Canada and a reputation for responsive, reliable service. The recognition validated what our clients already knew: that we were doing things differently.
Here’s a look at how our journey has unfolded:
2021 — First Recognition. GAM Tech was named to the Top 50 for the first time, earning validation for our approach to managed IT services. This came on the heels of earning the 117th spot on the MSP 501 global ranking in 2020, where we were recognized as the 2nd-ranked MSP in Alberta and 6th in Canada.
2022 — Building Momentum. We retained our Top 50 designation while expanding our service capabilities and strengthening our internal processes. Our focus on repeatable systems and documented procedures began to pay dividends in assessment scores.
2023 — Three-Peat and Great Place to Work. Three consecutive years on the list coincided with earning Great Place to Work certification, with a Trust Index Score of 92%. We scored 93% in Credibility, 90% in Respect, 91% in Fairness, 91% in Pride, and 96% in Camaraderie. This underscored that our operational excellence was built on a foundation of healthy culture and employee engagement.
2024 — Scaling Nationally. The fourth consecutive year saw GAM Tech operating across nine Canadian cities, from our Calgary headquarters to offices in Edmonton, Red Deer, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. We proved that you can scale a managed IT company nationally without sacrificing the quality of operations that earned the original recognition.
2025 — Five for Five. This year’s recognition is the most meaningful yet. We’re now SOC 2 certified and B-Corp certified — two designations that go well beyond industry norms for MSPs. Our team has grown, our service model has matured, and our commitment to best practices has only deepened.
Each year, the assessment forces us to take an honest look at our own operations and identify areas for improvement. That self-assessment process is one of the most valuable aspects of the program, even beyond the award itself.
Awards don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re the result of specific decisions, investments, and practices that compound over time. Here’s a deeper look at the operational pillars that have enabled GAM Tech to earn and sustain this recognition for five consecutive years.
In the managed IT industry, employee turnover is a chronic challenge. When technicians leave, institutional knowledge walks out the door, clients have to re-explain their environments to new faces, and service quality suffers. GAM Tech has taken a fundamentally different approach to this problem.
Our Great Place to Work certification, with a 92% Trust Index Score, reflects a culture built on respect, transparency, and genuine investment in our people. We’re an Alberta Living Wage Employer, meaning every team member earns a wage that supports a decent standard of living. We invest in training, professional development, and career progression because we know that supported employees deliver better service.
The result is a stable, experienced team that knows our clients’ environments inside and out. When you call GAM Tech, you’re not talking to a stranger — you’re working with someone who understands your business and has the context to solve problems fast.
Many managed IT providers outsource their after-hours support to third-party call centers. The experience for clients is often frustrating: you call with an urgent issue at 10 PM, explain your problem to someone who’s never seen your environment, and wait hours for meaningful resolution.
GAM Tech provides 24/7 support entirely through our internal team. Every call, every ticket, every urgent issue is handled by the same people who manage your environment during business hours. And we back that up with a 5-minute response time promise — not a target, not an average, but a commitment.
This model is more expensive to operate than outsourced alternatives, and that’s exactly why most MSPs don’t do it. But we believe it’s the right way to serve our clients, and it’s one of the reasons our client satisfaction scores consistently earn high marks in the Best Managed assessment.
SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2) is a rigorous auditing framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It evaluates a company’s controls related to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
For a managed IT provider, SOC 2 certification means that an independent auditor has verified that your MSP has the security controls and processes in place to protect your data. It’s not a self-assessment or a checkbox — it’s an external audit of actual practices.
GAM Tech’s SOC 2 certification gives our clients confidence that we’re not just talking about security — we’ve been independently verified. In an era where cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated and regulatory requirements are tightening, working with a SOC 2 certified MSP isn’t just nice to have — it’s increasingly a business necessity.
GAM Tech is one of a very small number of managed IT companies in Canada to hold B-Corp certification. B-Corp certification is earned by companies that meet the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
For our clients, this means you’re working with a company that takes its broader impact seriously — from how we treat our employees to how we operate sustainably. For prospective employees, it signals that GAM Tech is a company that aligns profit with purpose.
We believe that the best-managed companies are also the most responsible ones, and our B-Corp certification is tangible proof of that commitment.
One of the most common frustrations businesses have with their IT providers is unpredictable costs. You sign up for a managed IT plan, and then the surprise invoices start rolling in: project fees, emergency charges, hardware markups, and scope creep that inflates your monthly bill.
GAM Tech addresses this with a service model designed for predictability. Our included Project Packs ensure that common projects and changes are covered within your agreement, eliminating the nickel-and-diming that plagues the MSP industry. Our Hardware-as-a-Service offering lets clients access enterprise-grade hardware through a predictable monthly cost, with refresh cycles built in so equipment is always current.
This approach aligns our incentives with our clients’: instead of profiting from problems, we’re incentivized to prevent them. It’s a model that rewards operational excellence, and it’s a key reason we score well in the financial management and business operations categories of the Best Managed assessment.
GAM Tech operates across nine Canadian cities: Calgary (headquarters), Calgary Downtown, Edmonton, Red Deer, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. This national footprint means we can serve clients coast to coast while maintaining the local presence and on-the-ground expertise that large national providers often lack.
Whether you need on-site support in Edmonton, a network deployment in Vancouver, or help desk coverage for your Toronto office, our team is there. And because we’re a single company — not a franchise or a loosely affiliated network — the quality of service is consistent regardless of location.
For growing businesses that need their IT partner to scale with them across provinces, this national coverage is a significant advantage.
The managed IT industry exists in a rapidly changing environment, and no area is changing faster than cybersecurity. The threat landscape in 2026 looks fundamentally different from even a few years ago, and the stakes for businesses that get their IT wrong have never been higher.
Ransomware attacks, business email compromise, supply chain attacks, and AI-powered phishing campaigns are all escalating in frequency and severity. Small and mid-sized businesses are increasingly targeted because attackers know they often lack the security infrastructure of large enterprises.
For businesses in this 20–200 user range — GAM Tech’s core client base — the right managed IT partner is often the difference between being protected and being vulnerable. An MSP with strong security practices, documented incident response plans, and SOC 2 certification provides a level of protection that most businesses can’t build on their own.
Industries from healthcare to finance to professional services are facing increasing regulatory requirements around data protection, privacy, and cybersecurity. Many of these regulations require or strongly recommend that third-party service providers (including MSPs) meet specific security standards.
Working with a managed IT provider that holds recognized certifications like SOC 2 makes compliance easier and more defensible. It gives you documentation and audit trails that demonstrate due diligence — both to regulators and to your own clients who may be asking tough questions about your security posture.
Artificial intelligence is transforming how managed IT services are delivered, from automated threat detection to predictive maintenance to intelligent ticket routing. But AI also introduces new risks and complexities that require careful management.
MSPs that stay current with best practices — including how AI is integrated into their operations and how AI-related risks are mitigated — are better positioned to serve their clients effectively. The annual Best Managed IT Companies assessment is updated every year to reflect these evolving conditions, ensuring that the companies on the list are keeping pace with industry changes.
If you’re a current GAM Tech client, this award is confirmation of what you experience every day: a team that’s organized, responsive, and committed to your success. But let’s get specific about what sustained operational excellence translates to in practical terms.
Well-documented processes, experienced staff, and robust tooling mean that when something goes wrong, your issue gets resolved quickly. Our internal support model and 5-minute response time commitment exist because we’ve invested in the systems and staffing required to make them possible — that’s an operations investment, not just a marketing promise.
The best-managed IT companies don’t wait for things to break. They monitor, maintain, and optimize systems continuously so that most problems are prevented before they impact your business. The strength of our operational processes — validated by five consecutive years of third-party assessment — means we catch issues early and address them proactively.
MSPs that are poorly managed eventually fail, get acquired, or lose key staff — all of which disrupt your business. Working with a company that has demonstrated consistent management excellence reduces the risk of a surprise transition, a loss of institutional knowledge, or a decline in service quality.
The Best Managed assessment doesn’t just hand out awards — it provides detailed feedback on where companies excel and where they need to improve. Every year, GAM Tech uses this feedback to identify specific areas for enhancement. Five years of this iterative improvement cycle means we’re a meaningfully better company today than we were when we first earned the designation.
For business owners and IT decision-makers in the process of evaluating managed service providers, awards and certifications can be a useful part of your evaluation framework. Here’s how to think about them strategically.
A single award is nice but doesn’t tell you much about sustained performance. Multiple consecutive years of recognition is a much stronger signal. It indicates that the company has maintained its standards through growth, change, and the natural challenges of running a business.
Revenue-based rankings tell you how big a company is. Practice-based awards like the 50 Best Managed IT Companies tell you how well it’s run. Both are useful data points, but if you had to choose, the company that’s well-run will likely serve you better than the company that’s simply bigger.
Certifications like SOC 2, B-Corp, and Great Place to Work are independently verified. Don’t just take an MSP’s word for their credentials — ask for proof and verify the status of their certifications. Any reputable company will be happy to share this documentation.
No single award or certification tells the whole story. The best-managed IT companies will have multiple independent validations of their practices — industry awards, security certifications, workplace certifications, and client references that paint a consistent picture of operational excellence. GAM Tech’s combination of five consecutive Top 50 designations, SOC 2 certification, B-Corp certification, and Great Place to Work certification provides exactly this kind of multi-dimensional validation.
Five consecutive years of recognition is a milestone we’re incredibly proud of, but we’re not resting on it. The IT landscape is evolving rapidly, and the companies that thrive will be those that evolve with it.
Here’s what we’re focused on going forward:
Deepening our cybersecurity capabilities to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated threats, including AI-powered attacks and evolving compliance requirements.
Expanding our service model to address emerging client needs around AI integration, cloud optimization, and digital transformation for small and mid-sized businesses.
Continuing to invest in our team through training, professional development, and a workplace culture that attracts and retains the best talent in the industry.
Refining our operational processes based on the continuous feedback loop provided by the Best Managed assessment and our own internal quality initiatives.
Growing our national footprint to serve more Canadian businesses with the local presence and responsiveness they deserve.
The goal has never been to win awards for their own sake. The goal is to build the kind of company that deserves them — one that our clients trust, our employees are proud of, and our industry recognizes as setting the standard. Five years in, we’re more committed to that mission than ever.
To our team across all nine offices: this award belongs to you. Every technician who solves a problem at 2 AM, every project manager who keeps a deployment on track, every account manager who advocates for their clients — your daily work is what makes this recognition possible. Thank you.
To our clients: thank you for trusting us with the technology that powers your businesses. Your confidence in our team is the foundation everything else is built on. We don’t take that trust lightly, and we’re committed to earning it every single day.
To our partners and vendors: thank you for the collaboration and support that helps us deliver best-in-class solutions to our clients.
And to any business owner reading this who’s wondering what it’s like to work with a five-time award-winning managed IT provider — we’d love to have that conversation.
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