NextDC names partner award winners

Optus, Cloud Plus and Telstra were among the winners as NextDC applauded channel success at its inaugural partner awards, held at the Hilton Sydney last night.

Awards were presented across seven categories, with 'highly commended' recognitions also given.

Optus took out the award for Enterprise Partner of the Year, with Telstra 'highly commended' in the category.

David Caspari, Optus business vice president for products, solutions and ICT, says the company's relationship with NextDC has enabled it to be a key building block for Australian businesses wanting greater flexibility in their cloud deployments.

"By expanding the reach of our Optus Evolve and Optus Managed Cloud services through its national data center footprint, NextDC has enabled our customers across on-premises, private, hybrid and public cloud environments," Caspari says.

Telstra claimed the award for Carrier Partner of the Year, with Michael Riad, Telstra director of cloud services, global products and solutions says the carrier's relationship with NextDC is important as part of its multi-cloud offering.

AAPT was highly commended in the carrier partner category.

SMB Partner of the Year went to Cloud Plus, with M2 highly commended, while Atos was named New Partner of the Year, with Tesserent highly commended.

Jules Rumsey, Cloud Plus chief executive, says NextDC has provided Cloud Plus with 'consistently high-quality data center space in the major capital cities around Australia, backed by personalised account management, a single  point of contact for support and a high degree of visibility and control through OneDC'.

"However, extending beyond this, NextDC has provided advice, media support and sales lead to help us grow our business," Rumsey says.

Blue Central took the gong for As-a-service Partner of the Year, with Tech Mahindra highly commended, and Advisory Partner of the Year went to Deloitte, with Thomas Duryea Consulting highly commended in that category.

Microsoft was named Innovation Partner of the Year. No highly commended was given for the innovation partner category.

Craig Scroggie, NextDC chief executive, says the partner awards finalists are representative of the 'high quality businesses' in the NextDC partner program.

"The deals we've worked on together demonstrate the ability of our partner ecosystem to deliver premium-quality scalable and flexible services to end-user customers," Scroggie says.