Datacom has been named Microsoft's Country Partner of the Year for New Zealand at the 2016 MPN Partner of the Year Awards.

The awards were announced overnight, ahead of the 2016 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July.

The Country Partner of the Year Awards honour partner achievements across the globe.

“These partners and their award nominations were truly exceptional, and their accomplishments should be viewed as examples of excellence for every Microsoft partner,” Microsoft says.

As well as the 102 Country Partner of the Year awards, Microsoft also announced the winners of 37 global awards, with the winners selected from more than 2500 nominations from 119 countries.

Datacom is ‘a perennial award winning partner with Gold competencies across all Microsoft's stack' according to Microsoft's winners statements.

Greg Davidson, Datacom New Zealand chief executive, says the win can be attributed to the company's 'shared ambition to bring the combined value of each of our organisations to market for the benefit of our customers'.

“We are redefining the Australasian IT marketplace with Microsoft in ground-breaking areas such as the Internet of Things, evolving capability across hybrid cloud, cognitive computing and global business connectivity," Davidson says.

“Our unique-to-Datacom products built on Microsoft platforms are a further testament to our long-standing relationship with Microsoft and the capability of our exceptional people.

The Kiwi company is continuing to build new value added solutions on top of the Azure and Office 365 platforms, including a Sitecore solution on Azure for Auckland Airport, and a new social intranet for Tourism New Zealand which enables geographically diverse teams to work together in their native languages using Yammer Translation Services.

Datacom was also behinda n early adopter Azure IoT Suite project with New Zealand agritech business Tru-Test, which enables a weigh-scales device for beef and dairy farmers to predict herd growth and health; and a multi-tenanted SaaS product for the education sector called Smart Timetables which has been sold to a number of New Zealand universities.

The company is one of just 10 Microsoft partners globally to be on the MAS Customer Architecture Technology programme.

Ingram Micro was named global Distributor of the Year.