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Microsoft Awards Top Partners in 2007
Microsoft's partners got lauded last week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2007 event in Denver. Of 1,800 entries submitted, just 42 companies topped the list as Partner of the Year winners. The annual award focuses on partner achievements accomplished in the previous year. It puts the spotlight on the partners who best meet their customers' needs, according to Microsoft.
The Global ISV Partner of the Year winner was Quest Software, a repeat winner that took the same honor in 2004.
"In the past year, Quest saw its Windows business grow faster than any other part of the company for the third year in a row, with Quest managing over 20 million AD [Active Directory] users, licensing over 20 million Exchange users, and migrating over 1.5 million competitive users to Exchange," stated Robert Deshaies, Microsoft's U.S. Partner Group vice president.
Quest's development work includes providing solutions to enhance Microsoft's Active Directory, SharePoint, Exchange Server and Windows Server products. It also develops SQL Server and.NET management solutions and works to integrate Microsoft products with Unix and Linux.
The Enterprise Alliance Partner of the Year was HP, a now four-time winner of the award. In addition to supporting Microsoft's solutions, HP has made other moves to increase its collaboration with Microsoft.
For instance, in December of last year, the two companies formed a three-year strategic initiative called "HP & Microsoft Solutions for the People-Ready Business." The project aims to spur the adoption of "Microsoft-based solutions built on HP technology and supported by HP Services," according to an HP announcement.
"… We are bringing to market more than 30 new products and services in the next year that will further enable People-Ready Businesses," stated Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, in a Dec. 13, 2006 announcement. "Through our collaboration with HP, our more than 20,000 joint customers will have access to an expanded set of solutions and services to tackle their most pressing business problems."
The Business Process and Integration Solutions Partner of the Year was Cactus Commerce. This award goes to companies that sell or deploy business process management solutions. It's given to system integrators, service providers or software developers using a service-oriented architecture approach or providing enterprise application integration.
Winners in this category typically develop solutions using Microsoft BizTalk Server, as well as Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation.
Cactus Commerce was nominated for the award specifically because of its RFID Track & Trace solution, which uses radiofrequency identification technology for inventory tracking and workflow management. The company is a founding member of the Microsoft RFID Partner Advisory Council and also participates as a member of EPCglobal.
Other notable Microsoft Partner of the Year winners include:
Microsoft bestows its Partner of the Year awards to Microsoft Registered, Certified and Gold Certified partners.
A complete list of this year's winners is available here.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.