Microsoft honours partners for outstanding performance in FY12

Microsoft Sri Lanka held its annual Partner Conference & Awards Ceremony on 3 August 2012, at a grand ceremony held at Waters Edge Battaramulla. In a landmark event for Microsoft and their quality partners, the evening kicked off with the launch of Office 365, marking the availability of cloud services in Sri Lanka.

As customary, the evening culminated in Microsoft’s premier partner organisations being awarded for another year’s outstanding performance.  Top industry players Tech One Global (Pvt) Ltd. emerged champions of the evening, winning the title of ‘Best Distributor’. Tech One also bagged the award for Best ‘Attached at Source’ COEM Distributor and Named Partner.

ZILLIONe Technologies and Millennium Information Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. were recognised as the joint recipients of the ‘Best Managed Partner’ award while the title of ‘Best Partner Led Competitive Win Back’ also went to Millennium Information Technologies (Pvt) Ltd.

Maldivian IT services supplier MAXCOM Technologies walked away with ‘Best Partner – Maldives’ award and ‘Best Partner in the Public Sector’was won by MS Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. The title of ‘Best Microsoft Learning Partner’ went to NetAssist International (Pvt) Ltd.

Three special recognition awards were also presented at the awards ceremony. Millennium IT won the award for ‘Unified Communication Solution of the Year’. IronOne Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. won the ‘Application Development on Microsoft Platform’ award and Metropolitan Group (Pvt) Ltd. won the award for ‘The COEM Partner with Highest Revenue Contribution’.

Wasantha Weerakoon, COO of Tech One Global, winner of the ‘Best Distributor’ award, said: “We have been an exclusive Microsoft distributor from the inception and the benefits we’ve received from this partnership have helped us succeed both in local and foreign markets.  Our long-standing partnership with Microsoft has been challenging, yet in a most positive way, where both companies have benefitted greatly and grown because of this close-knit relationship. Working with Microsoft as always has been a rewarding experience.”

Another significant part of this year’s partner conference was the unveiling of Microsoft’s new ‘Partner Awards Scheme,’ set to kick off in the new year. The 2013 partner awards will be more in line with business changes that have taken place within Microsoft with the introduction of cloud-based products and looks at recognising, new types of partners as well as different business segments.

While the new award categories will give partners the opportunity to better showcase their achievements and milestones, the system will also attempt to align Microsoft business with that of their partners.

Pubudu Basnayake, Director, SMS&P, Microsoft Sri Lanka, who made the announcement, said that the new awards would have a Sales Specialist –Software developer (ISV) for New Enterprise Business category and separate awards for Partners who manage Windows 8 and Windows phones. The small business segment will also generate interesting awards in FY13.

He also unveiled the fresh new look to the Partner trophy and the new logo for the future Partner Conference.

Bernice Paris, APAC Enterprise & Partner Group – Microsoft Corporation, who also attended spoke about how partners needed to harness the excitement created by Office 365 cloud offering for mutual business growth.

“This is one of the greatest offerings from Microsoft where partners will have the opportunity to successfully accelerate the sales process for Office 365 and other cloud services, cutting the sales time in half compared to using traditional, premise-oriented sales processes.  There will be opportunity to reach new consumer segments and grow revenue in new and exciting ways.”

Speaking at the event, Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne, Country Manager of Microsoft Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, emphasised the significant role played by the partners in Microsoft’s success: “Our partner network, who are our distinguished guests here tonight, is the life blood behind all our achievements these years past. Every achievement we have on the table is also the achievement of our partners, the impact that we have made in the country and every Sri Lankan is because of them – the people who really matter to us the most.”

Imran Vilcassim, Director Enterprise Partner Group of Microsoft Sri Lanka who led the Office 365 launch sequence at the event commented that there was a significant role for partners to play in the way they intended to broad base the adoption of cloud services in Sri Lanka.  “One of the key things we will do is work closely with our partners to skill them up in talking to our customers to ensure that both our partners and customers embrace the benefits of Office 365 as a business driving productivity tool.”

Pubudu Basnayake, Director, Small and Mid-market Solutions and Partners group of Microsoft Sri Lanka, said: “Our investment in partner development has been significant.

In the past two to three months, we have brought in foreign resources to enable our partners to take up cloud. Technologies like Office, Exchange and Windows are the key areas we are looking at in terms of working with partners to go to market. So to enable this we have brought up different schemes based on rebates and incentives to excite partners to take this out into the market.”