Published on the 20/03/2015 | Written by Clare Coulson

The power of integrated solutions, cloud and mobile apps were on show at the eighth annual New Zealand Partner Awards for 2015…

The Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards for 2015 took place last night, kicking off in spectacular fashion with a jaw-dropping acrobatics display from Dust Palace – completely tech-free but big on the agility and flexibility theme the company is pushing. The evening continued at a fast clip, where 300-plus finalists and their clients, Microsoft staff and media gathered to celebrate 19 winners, highlighting some of the best technology deployments in New Zealand. Indeed New Zealand is currently the leader in the world for cloud adoption and Microsoft has a goal to help IT to surpass the tourism sector in revenue for New Zealand. Managing Director Paul Muckleston, in a wide ranging update, emphasised the investment in IT education, in particular through the Microsoft Student Accelerator programme <http://msa.azurewebsites.net/>, inviting on to the stage Team Estimeet who recently returned from a whirlwind global tour after winning a Worldwide Microsoft Imagine Cup gong last year.

The room was full of familiar faces, plus a good dose of new ones who were first-time entrants to the awards. The complexity and interconnectedness of technology projects was also highlighted by the fact that a number of projects were finalists in multiple categories, especially where apps are concerned – for example Intergen/NV Interactive’s work with PGG Wrightson and Koorb Consulting/Marker Metro’s work with Plunket, both of which went on to scoop two awards on the night (we chat with Plunket in next week’s webinar). Whether it is digital-first, cloud-first or mobile-first, the message is clear.

Intergen made a clean sweep of the Business Productivity Awards category winning both the CRM and ERP Partner of the Year for their projects at PGG Wrightson and New Zealand Oil & Gas respectively. In announcing these categories Microsoft said it judged them on the key metrics of ROI, digitisation, operational efficiency and customer experience improvements.

Other stand-out winners included Datacom’s Enterprise Cloud award for its work moving Zespri’s SAP platform to Azure <https://istart.co.nz/nz-news-items/zespri-world-first-with-sap-move-to-azure/> (a world first), VMob’s Rising Star award (helped by their customer wins with globally recognised brands such as McDonald’s and 7-Eleven) and Provoke Solution’s two awards – one for Alan Marshall as the Individual Pre-Sales Technical Specialist (hailed onto stage as flag bearer for these unsung industry heroes), and another in the new Marketing category for its “Closer Look Cloud” campaign.

The full winners list along with judges’ comments is below. Congratulations to all the winners and well done to the finalists.

Cloud Awards
• Cloud SMB
Finalists: Atmospheric, Kinetics, SoftSource, The Full Suite
WINNER: Atmospheric
COMMENTS: “Having recently rebranded, Atmospheric was previously known as Network Agents. Atmospheric have uniquely leveraged marketing resources to grow their cloud customer base. They have worked hard to retire servers and are leading the surge into the cloud in the SMB space.”

• Cloud Enterprise
Finalists: Datacom, Enlighten Designs, Sitecore, SoftSource
WINNER: Datacom
COMMENTS: “Having won this same category last year, Datacom started with SAP Test and Development but has now gone on to completely transform customer Zespri’s global business by moving a significant amount of business services to Azure and managing their infrastructure and applications worldwide. They have pushed the boundaries of what is achievable on the Azure platform and Datacom has expanded Zespri’s capability to manage environments worldwide – to over 53 countries, and migrated nearly 400 servers into the cloud!”

• Cloud Platform
Finalists: NV Interactive, Provoke Solutions, Timely, VMob
WINNER: NV Interactive
COMMENTS: “This award carries the hallmarks of NV Interactive’s innovative design approach to web and mobile solutions. The challenge was to scale blackcaps.co.nz to meet future demand including six intense weeks of the cricket world cup. NV took New Zealand Cricket on a comprehensive digital journey which involved their web and mobile properties migrating to Azure. The blackcap’s website was reimagined as a modern responsive web experience.”

• Hosting
Finalists: OneNet, SoftSource, MHA Cloud Computing
WINNER: MHA Cloud Computing
COMMENTS: “MHA demonstrated leadership in an innovative and positive partnership with Microsoft, clearly aligning its business strategy with Microsoft’s cloud transformation, incorporating Office 365, Azure and Lync solutions as part of their service offering. MHA’s video case study on FreshMax provides a refreshing insight to their positive and successful working relationship with their customers.”

Competency Awards: Core Infrastructure
• Devices and Deployment
Finalists: Datacom, Dimension Data, Fujitsu
WINNER: Fujitsu
COMMENTS: “Fujitsu implemented a first of its kind solution for a New Zealand enterprise government agency, with its implementation of Windows 8.1 solution at the Ministry of Primary Industries. The customer is extremely happy with their Windows implementation, and are well positioned with Windows Phone, Surface Pro 3 and soon to include Windows 10.”

• Datacenter
Finalists: Datacom, Spark Digital
WINNER: Spark Digital
COMMENTS: “Spark Digital’s work at Downer shows how a change of infrastructure can really improve how a company operates. The hosted services provided by Revera, a subsidiary of Spark Digital, offer best-in-class private and partner-hosted cloud capability.”

Competency Awards: Application Platform
• Data Analytics
Finalists: Enlighten Designs, Montage, Stellar Consulting, Theta
WINNER: Stellar Consulting
COMMENTS: “Stellar Consulting have provided a comprehensive BI platform to their customer, handling the challenge of complex data integration across multiple source systems. Their solution for Toyota New Zealand is recognised for the innovation and software development for managing complex Meta data and data integration. The customer also benefited from the latest SQL server platform for performance reporting and Analytics.”

• Windows App Developer
Finalists: Lazyworm Apps, Marker Metro, Joint (NV Interactive and Intergen)
WINNER: Marker Metro
COMMENTS: “Marker Metro created a Windows 8 application for Plunket that benefited from the strong integration of Dynamics CRM, Azure Active Directory and SQL. Plunket’s ability to serve New Zealand children has been revolutionised through functional, user friendly technology.”

Competency Awards: Business Productivity
• Collaboration and Content
Finalists: Datacom, Enlighten Designs, Intergen, Leapthought
WINNER: Leapthought
COMMENTS: “Leapthought’s Fulcrum application provides a unique, best-in-class solution for Capital Infrastructure Projects such as those at Auckland Transport. These projects are large and complex in nature with multiple government and commercial organisations involved. With Fulcrum, Leapthought is competing in new markets in and outside of New Zealand and utilising the strength of the Microsoft stack.”

• Communications
Finalists: Dimension Data, Lexel, UCFX
WINNER: UCFX
COMMENTS: “UCFX demonstrated how Microsoft Partners can revolutionise the market with a fresh approach and partner-oriented strategy. From zero channel partners this time last year, to having over twenty trusted channel partners today, UCFX are delivering value to customers in the communication space like never before.”

Competency Awards: Business Applications
• CRM
Finalists: Adaptable Solutions, Datacom, Intergen, Koorb
WINNER: Intergen
COMMENTS: “Intergen has developed a mature Dynamics practice, partnering well in delivering cloud technologies for CRM and other solutions. Intergen is helping PGG Wrightson transform faster and optimise their salesforce.”

• ERP
Finalists: Intergen, Koorb, Sable37
WINNER: Intergen
COMMENTS: “Intergen has done outstanding work with New Zealand Oil & Gas over the last year with their implementation of Dynamics AX R3. Along with many tasks turned into automated procedures, Security and Database logging have seen unprecedented improvements for NZ Oil & Gas.”

Individual Awards
• Presales Technical Specialist
Finalists: CodeBlue: Henry Min, Provoke Solutions: Alan Marshall, Spark Digital: David Ollason
WINNER: Alan Marshall, Provoke Solutions
COMMENTS: “Alan’s level of knowledge, work and commitment to Microsoft platforms demonstrate his outstanding performance as a trusted advisor to his customers and someone who remains laser focused on delivering value to their business.”

Segment Awards
• Education
Finalists: Cyclone, New Era IT, pcMedia
WINNER: New Era IT
COMMENTS: “New Era IT have great scale across schools with the solutions they offer, from hybrid cloud on hyper-v, to Lync, Office365 and BYOD. They were also able to provide evidence of partnering and had hard dollar proof points of the value they are providing to schools.”

• Innovation Technology for Good Citizenship
Finalists: IT Engine, Koorb
WINNER: Koorb
COMMENTS: “It was clear from their submission that the solution Koorb is providing for Plunket is going to have long term positive benefits not only for the organisation itself, but for New Zealand as a whole. We were impressed by their commitment to future-proofing the solution, as well as the care and attention given to ensuring deployment and utilisation by the Plunket nurses was a smooth process that would bring enduring results.”

• Learning
Finalists: Ace, Auldhouse, Kinetics, pcMedia
WINNER: Auldhouse
COMMENTS: “Auldhouse addressed market research by identifying an opportunity to educate the market on why certification matters through a highly successful marketing campaign. Consistently high calibre trainers and classroom learning experiences for both partners and industry clients, make Auldhouse an excellent choice for both technical and end user IT skills development.”

• Volume Licensing
Finalists: Fujitsu, Insight, Northcom ICT, Spark Digital
WINNER: Insight
COMMENTS: “Insight are showcasing exceptional performance backed by solid operational excellence and a strong customer focus. Insight have successfully been able to leverage their knowledge, experience and data intelligence to develop a number of sales tools and services that not only differentiate their value proposition to the market, but ultimately help fulfil their customer’s needs. They have cracked the code on attaching online services to enterprise license agreements.”

• Marketing
Finalists: Intergen, Kinetics, Origin IT, Provoke Solutions
WINNER: Provoke Solutions
COMMENTS: “Provoke’s (Closer Look Cloud) was a best in class example of a fully integrated marketing campaign. Their campaign was born to promote adoption of Azure for enterprise cloud customers. Provoke has grown an in-house marketing capability to the extent that they are able to offer digital marketing services to the market. They have also shown willingness to share their marketing insights with other Microsoft Partners.”

• Rising Star
Finalists: Lazyworm Apps, Origin IT, Timely, VMob
WINNER: VMob
COMMENTS: “VMob’s strategy is based around helping retailers connect customers with relevant offers via a real-time mobile app. They do this by leveraging contextual data about the customer with their offerings delivered on Microsoft Azure. This has enabled them to secure large global accounts like McDonald’s in the USA, Netherlands, Sweden and Japan as well as some local customers. Their rapid growth and forecasted projections are impressive along with the references from their existing customers. VMob is truly a ‘rising star’.”

For more information on the 2015 Microsoft NZ Partner Awards, visit http://www.microsoft.com/nz/partnerawards/