Mexia has taken out the top award at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner of the Year Awards, which saw eight Australian companies garners finalist status.

BizData was a finalist in the business analytics award category, with both last year's Australian Partner of the Year winner MOQdigital and Rackspace finalists in the cloud apps category, and Cavalry shortlisted for the customer experience award.

Also making the cut as finalists were Kloud, in the enterprise mobility category – a category it won last year; Sable37 for the ERP category; The Yield in the internet of things section and GIS People in the Public Sector, Government section.

Mark Leigh, Microsoft Australia director for the small and midmarket solutions and partner, says Australian partners ‘performed exceptionally well' again in the global awards.

“Competition this year was more intense than last year, with fewer award categories, which makes the success of our local partners even more satisfying,” Leigh says.

“Overall, Microsoft had more than 2,800 submissions from 115 countries for just 34 award categories.

Leigh says Mexia and the local finalists leverage Microsoft cloud and an array of the vendor's technologies to develop solutions ‘that really matter'.

“Each one of our partners is critical to our ability to deliver on our mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more,” he says.