Microsoft announces Australia Partner Awards finalists

Readify, Kloud and BizData will be looking for further glory at the 2015 Microsoft Australia Partner Awards, with Kloud up for contention in four categories and Readify a finalist in three.

All three companies were winners at Microsoft's global awards earlier this year.

Readify, which was named Australia Country Partner of the Year 2015 at World Partner Conference, is vying for top honours in the Excellence in Customer Lifecycle Management Award alongside Artis Group and SoftwareOne Australia; the Technology for Social Impact Award against CyTrack and Empired; and the Winning Together Award, where again it will face off against Empired along with Sitecore Australia.

Empired is also a finalist in for Excellence in Cloud Customer Relationship Management.

Kloud, meanwhile is a finalist for the Excellence in Cloud Platform Award, the Excellence in Cloud Productivity award, the Excellence in Enterprise Social Award and the Excellence in Managed Services Award, where it is up against Ensyst and XCentral.

BizData, which won the global Business Intelligence Partner of the Year title, will be seeking to replicate that success in the Excellence in Business Insights and Data category, where it is a finalist alongside Velrada and Wardy IT.

Other companies up for contention in multiple categories are Data#3, which is up for Excellence in Cloud Productivity, Excellence in Marketing and Excellence in Volume Licensing and, with two finalists spots apiece, Avanade, Velrada, UXC Eclipse and SoftwareOne.

Phil Goldie, Microsoft Australia director of partner business and development, says many of the award finalists this year have embraced Microsoft's cloud platforms.

"Microsoft's cloud offerings are enabling partners to develop creative applications, transform line of business apps and deliver traditional applications through cloud technologies," Goldie says.

"These award-finalist solutions all highlight the extraordinary power of our partnership and proof of customer confidence.

"It's very apparent that when customers have a stronger connection with their trusted partner, they also demonstrate a stronger commitment to products like Azure, Office 365 and CRM Online," he says.

"Most importantly, together we've achieved the ability to delight our customers with product and solution offerings that better meet their needs.

Goldie says award submissions this year were 'outstanding' making selection of the finalists 'a hard task, with so many partners reflecting so many great examples of cutting edge solutions, solving problems for others and creating more simplicity for their customers'.

"The Microsoft Australia Partner Award program allows us to take a moment to reflect and recognise the innovative and transformative work that is being done by partners across Australia.

"These accomplishments demonstrate and should serve as key examples of excellence for every Microsoft partner.

The award winners will be announced at the opening keynote of the Australia Partner Conference 2015 at the end of the month. For the first time, the Australia Country Partner of the Year – formally announced at WPC earlier this year – will also be recognised at MAPA 2015.

Emerging Partner Award finalists:

iiNet

Insync Technology

Inversecurve

Excellence in Business Insights and Data Award finalists:

BizData

Velrada

Wardy IT

Excellence in Cloud Customer Relationship Management award finalists:

Avanade

Empired

Velrada

Excellence in Cloud Platform award finalists:

Avanade

Kloud

Mexia

Excellence in Cloud Productivity award finalists:

Data#3

Datacom

Kloud

Excellence in Customer Lifecycle Management award finalists:

Artis Group

Readify

SoftwareOne Australia

Excellence in Enterprise Social award finalists:

Icomm Australia

Kloud

UXC Eclipse

Excellence in Learning award finalists:

DDLS

New Horizons Learning Centres

Superior Software for Windows

Excellence in Managed Services award finalists:

Ensyst

Kloud

XCentral

Excellence in Marketing award finalists:

Data#3

Generation-e

UXC Eclipse

Excellence in Mobility and Devices award finalists:

Ajilon

Cubesys

Ignia

Excellence in Small and Mid-Market Cloud Solutions award finalists:

Advance Computing

ONGC Systems

Ozbizweb Group

Excellence in Volume Licensing award finalists:

Data#3

Dimension Data

SoftwareOne Australia

Technology for Social Impact award finalists:

CyTrack

Empired

Readify

Winning Together award finalists:

Empired

Readify

Sitecore Australia