Published on the 01/04/2016 | Written by Hayden McCall
Winners were announced at the 9th annual event held in Auckland last night…
The awards recognise Microsoft partners who show excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technologies. This year, Microsoft recognised partners in 22 categories.
Brent Kendrick, director of small and midmarket solutions and partner group at Microsoft, commented on the growth of cloud solutions in the mix. “Cloud computing continued to dominate entries this year as more businesses look to their IT partners to transform their business with cloud-based services. The winners last night are shining examples in this space,” says Kendrick.
In the business applications arena, Fusion5 picked up its first award after joining the CRM partner ranks with the recent acquisition of Koorb’s Microsoft CRM and Sharepoint practise. The MyLinc student enrolment portal implemented at Lincoln University makes the enrolment process an entirely digital experience, and provides a personalised dashboard applicants and students.
The ERP gong went to Australian partner Sable37 for their work implementing the latest cloud version of AX for A/NZ retailer Citta Design. The company implemented Cloud37, their pre-configured AX version specifically designed for retail, and hosted in Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
This year’s Partner Awards saw the introduction of a new award category – Innovative Software Product of the Year – which is all about recognising ISVs that have built an inventive product on the Microsoft stack which uses the power of the cloud.
“We were pleased to see a high number of competitive entries in this inaugural category, says Kendrick.
“The winner, 11Ants Analytics, impressed the judges with an innovative retail software solution that enables retailers to take their raw transactional data and transform it into powerful decision making and promotional activity.”
Judges felt 11Ants Analytics has enormous global potential and is already becoming a great Kiwi export story, from start up through to global ISV.
“We look forward to seeing their business grow further in the next 12 months,” says Kendrick.
A full list of category winners as follows:
Cloud Awards
Winner, Cloud Small and Medium Business (SMB) Partner of the Year – Computercare
Winner, Cloud Enterprise Partner of the Year – Fujitsu
Winner, Cloud Platform – Azure Partner of the Year – Datacom
Winner, Hosting Partner of the Year – Revera
Winner, Innovative Software Product of the Year – 11Ants Analytics
Competency Awards: Core Infrastructure
Winner, Devices and Deployment Partner of the Year – Intergen
Winner, Datacenter Partner of the Year- Dimension Data
Competency Awards: Application Platform
Winner, Data Analytics Partner of the Year – Intergen
Winner, Windows App Developer Partner of the Year – NV Interactive and Intergen (joint application)
Competency Awards: Business Productivity
Winner, Collaboration and Content Partner of the Year – Datacom
Winner, Communications Partner of the Year – Lexel
Competency Awards: Business Applications
Winner, Customer Relationship Management Partner of the Year – Fusion5
Winner, Enterprise Resource Planning Partner of the Year – Sable37
Individual Awards
Winner, Sales Specialist of the Year – James Stainton, Datacom
Winner, Partner Seller of the Year – Andrew Kosmadakis, Intergen
Segment Awards
Winner, Marketing Partner of the Year – Provoke
Winner, ‘Rising Star’ Partner of the Year – Timely
Winner, Distributor Partner of the Year – Dicker Data
Winner, Education Partner of the Year – pcMedia
Innovative Technology for Good Citizenship Partner of the Year
Winner, Fujitsu
Learning Partner of the Year
Winner, Kinetics Group
Volume Licensing Partner of the Year
Winner, Spark Digital
For more information on the 2016 Microsoft NZ Partner Awards
