Klikon's cloud gamble pays out in Vegas

Klikon Solutions' cloud gamble has paid out in Las Vegas as it took home a major award at the HP Global Partner Conference (GPC).

The Sydney-based systems integrator was named Solution Partner of the Year - Cloud for the Asia Pacific and Japan region.

The win comes just over a year after Klikon's directors put their money on the table by acquiring NSW government shared services provider ac3 in December 2013.

David Abouhaidar, director of strategic alliances & commercials at Klikon, told CRN Australia that ac3 was a big part of the HP award.

Since the takeover, Klikon has been busily remodelling itself as part-integrator, part-cloud broker for government. Through ac3, it scored an early entry into GovDC, the pair of data centres set up in Silverwater and Unanderra that are housing a growing stable of state government environments.

It recently revealed a $7 million public sector contract with the Department of Justice, which has opted for an "everything-as-a-service" model.

The DoJ is expected to finish its migration into ac3 by March, joining around 30 other agencies - including NSW Health, Education, Fire and Rescue, and the Department of Finance and Services - to move parts of their organisation into GovDC.

Abouhaidar said: "HP is a strategic partner - our cloud platform runs on HP compute and storage and it was a natural progression to Helion. We a looking forward to taking advantage of an integrated platform on all of HP's solutions."

Kaaren Lewis, HP Australia's general manager of channels and indirect, Enterprise Group, said Klikon's win "demonstrates the expertise of our Australian partners in a complex and mature marketplace to implement the 'new style of IT' solutions to help customers drive tangible business outcomes".

The other Australian winner at GPC was Enigma Business Products, which was named Solution Partner of the Year - Print Services for APJ.

Pictured below: HP's Jim Merritt, Enigma's Shaun Hemburg and HP's Nick Lazaridis