Microsoft’s Australian partners have cleaned up with a number of wins in the vendor's partner of the year Awards, with award winners announced ahead of Microsoft's Inspire 2018 conference in Las Vegas.
In a blog post celebrating the haul of wins for local solutions providers, Microsoft Australia’s One Commercial Partner director Mark Leigh revealed cloud distributor rhipe had been named Australian country partner of the year.
The distie recently crossed the milestone of achieving 200,000 Microsoft CSP customers, and its CSP business had raked in $13 million in revenue for the half-year ending 31 December 2017, up from $5 million the previous year.
In June 2017, rhipe was named as a Microsoft globally managed licensing partner, joining just seven other globally managed partners across the world, and the only one based in Asia-Pacific.
“Rhipe has forged its own very strong alliance with 1700 Microsoft partners to accelerate cloud-based digital transformation across the nation,” Leigh wrote.
“Leveraging Microsoft Azure and the rich array of Microsoft tools and services, rhipe and its partners are working with organisations in every sector and geography.
“Innovative solutions, such as rhipe’s Prism cloud portal that simplifies cloud billing and provisioning, and its smart marketing support for partners is what sets it apart and has led to significant growth over the last 12 months for rhipe and its partner ecosystem.”
Aussie partners also took out a number of global award categories.
The teamwork award went to Adopt and Embrace, a Brisbane-based Microsoft consultancy set up by a former Data#3 staffer that specialises in helping teams adopt new technology in the best possible way.
“This partner demonstrated how it is possible to drive broad adoption of Office 365 by aligning closely to C-suite business priorities, and in turn secure benefits for all employees that ripple right across the organisation,” Leigh wrote.
Paul Woods left Data#3 after a decade to launch the independent consulting business in 2015, which was set up to help existing Microsoft resellers to consult and train customers for new technology deployments.
Perth-headquartered Velrada was named the winner of the Dynamics 365 for field service award for architecting solutions across Dynamics 365, Microsoft Azure and Office 365.
Velrada chief executive Rob Evans told CRN his company had undertaken some big projects with long-term partner Sodexo, a global facilities management firm headquartered in France. Velrada has also worked with not-for-profit Silverchain and a number of government agencies.
“The team are ecstatic as you can imagine,” Evans told CRN. "It's the result of a lot of hard work. They’ve been driving the main program of work with Sodexo, which has been a fantastic customer, and the support from Microsoft has helped both them and us.”
Sydney's Vector Risk won the 2018 financial services award for its work assisting financial services businesses meet regulatory compliance through solutions that employ Microsoft Azure, HPC Pack and SQL Server.
“Vector Risk’s solution delivers absolute clarity about exposures – reducing risk and streamlining compliance,” Microsoft's Leigh wrote.
Microsoft’s media and communications award was won by Brisbane-based Advvy, which used Dynamics 365 to develop a solution to help marketers and media planners collaborate more effectively. The solution also uses Office 365 and Azure’s analytics capabilities and seeks to reduce administrative overhead, turnaround and response times, according to Microsoft.
Special mention was made of trans-Tasman solutions provider Datacom, which was a finalist in the app innovation category for developing a customer service app for the electricity industry.
Leigh also thanked a number of partners that he said were profoundly important to Australia's current digital transformation journey.
“DDLS has the largest community of Microsoft certified trainers in Australia and works with developers, end users and other partners to make sure everyone has the skills for success,” he said.
“Advance Computing, which has leveraged its understanding of agribusinesses to deploy groundbreaking solutions including an Azure and IoT system developed for Australian Consolidated Milk that’s helping ensure top quality while reining in costs and boosting efficiency.
“Also, KPMG and Commonwealth Bank has developed a groundbreaking solution called Wiise to help SMEs grow and prosper, leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 365."
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