About ARN

ARN

Overview

ARN — originally Australian Reseller News — is an online trade news publication for the information technology channel in Australia and New Zealand, published at arnnet.com.au under the tagline "The voice of the Australian IT channel". It reports on the businesses that sell, distribute and support technology: resellers, distributors, managed service providers, systems integrators and the vendors that supply them. Its coverage is built around daily news on company results, distribution agreements, mergers and acquisitions, executive appointments, partner programs and industry policy, and it also runs the channel's best-known events and awards programs, the ARN Innovation Awards, the Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) and the EDGE conference. It is published in Sydney by IDG Communications Pty Ltd, operating under the Foundry brand, and should not be confused with the unrelated Australian Radio Network, which shares the ARN initials.

History

Industry directories compiled by Forrester and by Omdia date ARN's founding to 1991 and identify its publisher as IDG, describing it in terms drawn from the publication's own profile: "ARN is the voice of the Australian IT channel" and has kept Australia's technology companies up to date with breaking news and in-depth analysis of the industry and the local channel landscape. ARN grew up as the Australian channel title of IDG, the technology media group founded in Boston in 1964 by Patrick McGovern, within an Australian operation that also produced local editions of global mastheads such as PC World, Computerworld and CIO.

The parent company changed hands repeatedly. IDG was sold to China Oceanwide Holdings Group in 2017, and Blackstone acquired IDG in November 2021 in a deal reported at US$1.3 billion. On 17 February 2022, IDG Communications announced it had rebranded as Foundry, repositioning itself as a marketing technology and data company built around its editorial brands. In Australia, the legal publisher remained IDG Communications Pty Ltd, while staff adopted Foundry email addresses and branding.

The Australian operation contracted sharply over this period. In a February 2026 Mumbrella column, former ARN journalist Eleanor Dickinson wrote that the business had passed through three private-equity sales in as many years — Oceanwide, Blackstone and, most recently, Regent — and, citing a report by Influencing that Mumbrella verified, that ARN was effectively the last masthead standing in the local operation after rounds of redundancies left a small team running what remained profitable, notably ARN's events. Despite those cuts, arnnet.com.au has continued to publish daily news through 2026.

Programming and Content

ARN's journalism is organised by topic: Artificial Intelligence, Business Operations, Careers, Cloud Computing, Computers and Peripherals, Data Center, Digital Transformation, Emerging Technology, Enterprise Applications, Government, Industry, Innovation, IT Leadership, IT Management, Managed Service Providers, Markets, Security, and Vendors and Providers. The staple stories are channel-specific: distributors signing new vendor lines, resellers and MSPs winning contracts or being acquired, vendors restructuring their partner programs, and executives moving between channel companies. Longer-form work includes features such as its October 2026 examination of Dicker Data's Sektor acquisition and growth strategy and a September 2026 profile of Canberra-founded MSP Moncrieff, "Six decades strong", tracing the company's evolution through successive IT eras, as well as a homepage "Spotlight" interview format. October 2026 coverage, for example, included Dicker Data's NZ$138 million acquisition of Sektor, NetApp and Zoom leadership appointments in A/NZ, Macquarie Telecom's extension of its Netskope partnership and CrowdStrike's expansion of MSSP certification with CyberCert. The site also carries sponsored "BrandPost" content, clearly labelled as such, alongside its news.

Its events are a substantial part of the product. The ARN Innovation Awards reached their twentieth edition in 2026, with finalists announced on 31 August 2026 by a shortlist panel that included Hall of Fame member Moheb Moses, Cathy O'Sullivan of Foundry and ARN's Julia Talevski. The awards were earlier styled the ARN Australian IT Industry Awards; an ASX announcement by Dicker Data in September 2013 described them as "the annual event which honours the Australian IT Industry's best performing companies", determined its distributor categories by peer review, and recorded Dicker Data's Hardware Distributor of the Year wins in 2012 and 2013 and chairman David Dicker's induction into the industry's Hall of Fame in 2010. Alongside the news, ARN publishes in-depth features and interviews with channel leaders, market analysis drawing on research partners such as Omdia — whose analysts headline its EDGE conference — and sustained coverage of the managed services and distribution sectors that form its core readership. Omdia's March 2026 survey of the world's channel media counted ARN among 106 channel outlets worldwide and reproduced its self-description as the voice of the Australian IT channel. The Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) celebrate women across the channel — ARN reported the 2026 edition as its largest celebration, with 222 finalists from more than 100 organisations — and in 2026 ARN also ran a WIICTA Mentorship Program. Its EDGE conference for channel executives was held from 26 to 29 July 2026 at the Cairns Convention Centre under the theme "The Path to Growth: Turning uncertainty into advantage", featuring Omdia channel analysts Jay McBain and Mark Iles.

Audience and Reach

ARN's audience is the professional IT channel community of Australia and New Zealand: executives and staff of resellers, distributors, managed service providers, integrators and technology vendors, the readership reflected in its directory listings among global channel media outlets tracked by Forrester and Omdia. Its awards programs draw the industry at scale — on ARN's own reporting, the 2026 Women in ICT Awards represented 222 finalists from more than 100 organisations, and EDGE convenes channel leaders from across A/NZ. ARN does not publish an independently audited audience figure for the website in the sources consulted, and none is claimed here.

Digital Presence

ARN publishes at arnnet.com.au, updated daily with news, analysis and event coverage; stories from the site also appear on Foundry's Channel Asia platform. Its social channels include Facebook (ARNnet), X (@ARNnet) and a LinkedIn company page under the name "ARN — Australian Reseller News". The website carries topic hubs for each of its coverage areas, dedicated sections for the Innovation Awards, WIICTA and EDGE, and sponsored content labelled BrandPost. A small Sydney-based editorial team files the bulk of its stories, with additional contributions from New Zealand.

Ownership and Organisation

ARN is published by IDG Communications Pty Ltd (ABN 14 001 592 650), the Australian arm of Foundry, the business formed from IDG Communications' February 2022 rebrand. Its contact page lists a postal address of PO Box 1753, North Sydney NSW 2059. The editorial team named on the site's contact page comprises Cathy O'Sullivan as editorial director for A/NZ, Julia Talevski as editor for A/NZ, Sasha Karen as senior journalist and Lilia Guan as community editor; most daily stories in 2026 are bylined to Talevski, Karen and Guan, with Louis van Wyk contributing from New Zealand. Earlier, Leon Spencer was listed as a key ARN editor in Forrester's 2021 directory of channel media. The same contact page routes advertising and event sales through Foundry's commercial team.

Contact and Availability

ARN is freely available online at arnnet.com.au, where readers can browse news by topic or search its archive. Editorial, advertising and event contacts are published on the site's contact page under IDG Communications Pty Ltd, PO Box 1753, North Sydney NSW 2059, with editorial staff reachable at Foundry email addresses. Registrations for EDGE and entries for the ARN Innovation Awards and the Women in ICT Awards are handled through the respective sections of the website.