Microsoft names winning Australian partners

Microsoft has kicked off its Australian Partner Conference presenting awards to a range of Australian partners.

Readify won at last night's Microsoft Australian Partner awards, adding three more awards to its display cabinet, with Avanade, UXC Eclipse and Ignia also claiming a clutch of awards each.

Readify was named Microsoft's Australian Country Partner of the Year at the vendor's Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this year, with last night's award ceremony kicking off with recognition of that award.

The awards kicked off this year's Microsoft Australian Partner Conference, where more than 1100 partner delegates are in attendance.

Readify then went on to scoop up a further three awards, being named winner of the Excellence in Customer Lifecycle Management award and taking out the Technology for Social Impact award for its work with Barnardos.

Phil Goldie, Microsoft Australia director of partner business and development , says Readify's Life Stories solution for Barnados 'revolutionises' the way the stories of children in the care system are captured and stored,  while streamlining workflow and minimising the administration for welfare case workers.

"Life Story means children don't have to retell their stories to new or different case workers, reliving painful memories," Goldie says.

The company also claimed one of three Excellence in Industry and Platform Innovation awards, a new category for this year's awards, which kicked off Australian Partner Conference on the Gold Coast. Readify won the acclaim for a school parent portal.

Also claiming Excellence in Industry and Platform Innovation awards were CloudFirst for its its FranchiseFirst cloud platform and another multi-award winner for the night, Ignia, which won for a mining solution.

The awards also saw Ingram Micro win Excellence in Wholesale Distribution with Goldie noting that the distributor Goldie 'absolutely nailed it' over the last 12 months.

"They delivered the broadest range of Microsoft products and services, they grew their partner reach by 13% year over year, adding 500 new cloud platform partners.

Brisbane's inSync Technology, which started in June 2013 and focuses on mid market and enterprise - between 200 and 2000 seats, took out the award for Emerging Partner, with Goldie noting inSync has had strong wins in education, public sector and corporate accounts.

"Just two years [after starting], they have achieved financial revenues of over $3.2 billion, 12 staff and a presence all over the East Coast," Goldie says

Excellence in Business Insights and Data went to Velrada while Excellence in Cloud Customer Relationship Management went to Avanade, who also took out the award for Excellence in Cloud Platform.

Kloud took out the Excellence in Cloud Productivity award, for its NRMA Office 365 solution, which was also a global winner earlier this year at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Awards, where it saw Kloud claim global Cloud Productivity Partner of the Year.

UXC Eclipse won the award for Excellence in Marketing and also took out the Excellence in Enterprise Social award for its work with Tourism Australia building the MyTA portal 'which brings everything together in one place' Goldie says.

The solution builds on Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online, Yammer, Sharepoint and Dynamics Devs and has reduced costs for Tourism Australia 'by up to 15% just in the first year'.

SSW's Fireboot Camp solution, an intensive nine week training program designed to make people  'job ready', earned the company the Excellence in Learning award.

Xcentral claimed the award for Excellence in Managed Services for a hybrid solution integrating Office onsite and cloud systems which it built for Guardian Strata, while Ignia claimed its second award winning for Excellence in Mobility and Devices.

Ozbizweb Group claimed the Excellence in Small and Mid Market Cloud Solutions for its Aus Recruitment solution, while Data#3 was the winner of the Excellence in Volume Licensing.

Goldie says Data#3's volume licensing has helped more than 750 enterprise customers and 3000 small and mid-market organisations to understand the benefits and licensing implications of the cloud first, mobile first world, covering over 43% of the Australian market.

"Focusing on transitioning customers to online agreements results in 350% year on year growth for Azure and a 20% growth in the Office 365 business," Goldie says.

Sitecore took out the Winning Together award, for its partnership with Acenture, Avanade and TCS for a solution combining Microsoft's Azure with Sitecore's experience platform with the design and digital strategical expertise of Acenture and TCS.