Enlighten Designs and Datacom feature heavily among the finalists in this year’s Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards.
Enlighten secured six placings – in the Enterprise Content Management Solution of the Year category, Portals and Collaboration Solution of the Year, the supreme Business Impact Solution of the Year, along with two places in the Partnering of the Year Award with Integral/Axon, and staff member Alex Taylor's place in the Solutions Architect of the Year category.
Datacom features in the Application Platform Solution of the Year, Enterprise Content Management Solution of the Year, Portals and Collaboration Solution of the Year, CRM Solution of the Year, and staff member Carl Whitehead is a finalist in the Solutions Architect of the Year.
Other notable finalists are Newlease and Markinson Business Solutions, each of which entered the local market last year.
Newlease is a finalist in the Distributor of the Year and Reseller of the Year categories, while Markinson is a finalist in the CRM Solution of the Year award and the Partnering Award of the Year, with AppServ.
The awards are split into four sub-categories – Solution, Individual, Partnering and Supreme.
The new awards this year are the Partners’ Choice CIO of the Year and Business Impact Solution of the Year. The CIO finalists are Air New Zealand's Julia Raue, Neville Richardson of Les Mills and Rob McNaughtan from Mighty River Power.
Director of partner strategy, Brent Colbert, says Microsoft felt it was important to expand the scope of the awards this year to celebrate and demonstrate more of the industry’s work.
In categories with only one finalist, Microsoft says the company will be judged against previous winning submissions in the category. Each finalist receives five tickets to the awards event, to be held on 18 August at the Langham Hotel in Auckland.
This year's finalist list:
Solution Awards
Application Platform Solution of the Year Datacraft, Datacom, Hewlett Packard
Enterprise Content Management Solution of the Year
Datacom, Enlighten Designs, IGA Systems
Portals and Collaboration Solution of the Year
Datacom, Enlighten Designs, Intergen
Core Infrastructure Solution of the Year
Datasouth (Catholic Diocese of Christchurch), Datasouth (Warren & Mahoney), Lexel Systems
CRM Solution of the Year
Datacom, Magnetism, Markinson, OA Systems
ERP Solution of the Year
Intergen, Koorb Consulting
Small Business Solution of the Year
Datasouth, Kinetics (Jenkin Timber), Kinetics (Sistema Plastics), Maclean Computing
Citizenship Solution of the Year
Intergen, Provoke
Unified Communications Solution of the Year
Integral-Axon
Individual Awards
Solutions Architect of the Year
Alex Taylor (Enlighten Designs), Carl Whitehead (Datacom)
Partners Choice CIO of the Year
Julia Raue (Air New Zealand), Neville Richardson (Les Mills), Rob McNaughtan (Mighty River Power)
Partnering Awards
Distributor of the Year
Express Data, Ingram Micro, NewLease
Learning Solutions Partner of the Year
Auldhouse
Reseller of the Year
Gen-i, Lexel Systems, NewLease
Online Services Partner of the Year
Contrast Media, Provoke
Partnering of the Year Award
Enlighten Designs & Integral-Axon (Tau Ora), Enlighten Designs & Integral-Axon (Vodafone), Markinson & App Serv
Supreme Awards
Business Impact Solution of the Year
Datacraft, Enlighten Designs, Theta Systems
ISV Solution of the Year
Aptimize, Serko Online
Platform Value Partner of the Year
Gen-i, Softsource
