Cloud solutions dominated at this year’s Microsoft New Zealand Partner awards event, held in Auckland last night, reflecting the growing strength of cloud solutions in the New Zealand IT landscape over the past year.
The field of contenders with strong cloud solutions continued the trend that was seen at last year’s event, as did the addition of two new category awards in the cloud division this year.
“We had an outstanding number of entries this year, with exceptionally high standards which made the process of selecting the winners very difficult,” said Brent Kendrick, Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners Director Microsoft New Zealand.
“It’s great for us to be able to reward and recognise companies for their dedication to provide innovative solutions that make customers’ lives easier.”
Stellar Consulting was one of only two finalist for the Business Intelligence Competency Awards, which was won by Theta.
The biggest winner of the night was SoftSource, picking up the top prizes in the Mid-market Solution Provider, Sales Specialist of the Year and Cloud SMB categories. The company was praised for its commitment to providing tailored solutions, for easing the technology transition of sceptics and traditionalists, and for opening clients’ minds to newer technologies and improved solutions.
Winning the Mid-market Solution Provider prize was SoftSource’s work with environmental planning and design consultancy Boffa Miskell after they received damage in the Christchurch earthquake. SoftSource found that an array of operating systems were causing serious difficulties communicating and file sharing, and used these pain points to create an exciting and innovative solution.
IT Engine won the Small Business award for the work they did for the Rural General Practitioners Network (RGPN). RGPN were disappointed with their previous cloud service, often experiencing network outages of more than three hours, several times a week, and had problems saving new contract data which affected their business immensely. IT Engine shifted RGPN to a reliable and robust hybrid cloud service that delivered the availability and functionality they needed to be productive and get on with their work.
The Cloud Enterprise award winner, Datacom, picked up the prize for transitioning Zespri’s infrastructure and enterprise applications globally from on-premises, to 100 per cent public cloud. So far, SAP, core services and zespri.com have been successfully migrated.
Also, Telecom’s digital solutions division Gen-i won the award for Communications Competency for a business solution for their work using Microsoft Lync to address common client challenges such as out of date PABX systems, and complicated decentralised storage of information.
A total of 22 awards were handed out across four main categories including Cloud, Competency, Individual and Segment. The full list of winners and finalists is below.
Cloud Awards
Cloud SMB:
Winner: SoftSource. Finalists: Full Suite, PC Media
Cloud Enterprise:
Winner: Datacom. Finalists: Enlighten Designs
Cloud Hosting:
Winner: OneNet. Finalists: N/A
Competency Awards: Core Infrastructure
Devices and Deployment
Winner: Gen-i. Finalist: CodeBlue
Management and Virtualisation
Winner: Dimension Data. Finalists: Computer Concepts, Dimension Data
Server Platform
Winner: IT Engine. Finalists: Dimension Data, Computer Concepts Limited
Competency Awards: Application Platform
Business Intelligence
Winner: Theta. Finalist: Stellar
Windows 8 App Developer
Winner: Marker Metro. Finalist: NV Interactive
Windows Azure Solution
Winner: Provoke Solutions. Finalists: LeapThought, Theta
Competency Awards: Business Productivity
Collaboration and Content
Winner: Enlighten Designs. Finalists: Datacom, Intergen
Communications
Winner: Gen-i. Finalists: Dimension Data, Provoke Solutions
Competency Awards: Business Applications
CRM
Winner: Koorb Consulting. Finalists: Intergen
ERP
Winner: Intergen. Finalist: Theta
Individual Awards
Sales Specialist of the year
Winner: SoftSource. Finalist: N/A
Pre-Sales Technical Specialist of the year
Winner: Computer Concepts Limited. Finalist: Provoke Solutions
Segment Awards
Distributor
Winner: Express Data. Finalist: N/A
Education
Winner: Cyclone. Finalist: Business Mechanix, New Era
Innovative Technology for Good Citizenship
Winner: NV Interactive. Finalist: Magnetism
Learning
Winner: Auldhouse. Finalist: Kinetics, Auldhouse
Midmarket Solution Provider
Winner: SoftSource. Finalist: IT Engine, CodeBlue
Small Business
Winner: IT Engine. Finalist: Kinetics
Volume Licensing Partner of the year
Winner: Insight. Finalists: Gen-I, Fujitsu, Dimension Data
– Microsoft News Center
