Kiwi Companies Will Bring Home Gold At Global Partner Awards

Media Release Embargoed - 23 June 2011, 6am

Innovative Kiwi Companies Will Bring Home Gold At Global Partner Awards

GreenButton and Provoke win coveted awards through innovative use of Microsoft technology.

Microsoft today announced the winners and finalists of its 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year Awards. GreenButton was announced as a finalist in both the BizSpark Partner of the Year and Tech & High Performance Computing Partner of the Year categories, as well as global winner of the Windows Azure ISV Partner of the Year Award. For the second year running, New Zealand has a Country Partner of the Year, this year being awarded to Provoke NV Interactive was also named a finalist for the Web Development Partner of the Year Award.

The annual awards honour members of the Microsoft Partner Network for delivering exemplary customer solutions during the past year, using Microsoft technology. Award winners and finalists were chosen from nominations from around the world, with nearly 3,500 entries submitted by partners from more than 200 countries. The award finalists and winners were selected from a group of nominations based on their dedicated use of Microsoft technologies to provide solutions for their customers' needs.

"Our congratulations go out to GreenButton, Provoke and NV Interactive as finalists and winners of the 2011 Worldwide Partner Awards. They have delivered innovative, creative and superior Microsoft solutions and services, and stamped the Kiwi mark on the world as a hub for technology innovation," says Paul Muckleston, Managing Director for Microsoft New Zealand.

"It's incredible to see the level of expertise our partners exhibit as they pioneer solutions and services that exceed customer needs and expectations, and strengthen their businesses. We are proud to be able to work with such creative and dedicated companies."

GreenButton has had extraordinary growth over the past two years, helping software vendors get to grips with the cloud and aiding their "transition to the cloud" journey. GreenButton's hybrid approach allows software vendors to maximise their current software business while simultaneously enabling cloud functionality. Besides their patented software, the company's greatest value is their experience, as they truly understand all aspects of taking an existing high performance application to the cloud. "For us, this award is complete validation that what we do, and how we do it, is globally accepted and recognised. We are a fairly small team and we work long hours, doing the hard yards an internet start-up company has to endure - compared with big US companies we've done it tougher with less, which is the Kiwi way," says Vivian Morresey, Chief Marketing Officer for GreenButton.

"The recognition this award will bring us will definitely help our business grow and drive new sales - it is the kind of positivity all companies need! Having an internationally accepted award like this will allow us to position ourselves as real market innovators, instead of a 'who, from where'."

Adding to their double-win at the Microsoft Partner Awards in 2010, Provoke, a Microsoft specialist that develops bespoke and product-based software using Microsoft .NET, SQL Server and SharePoint 2010, has now won the coveted Country Partner of the Year Award for 2011. This award recognises Microsoft partners that have demonstrated business excellence in delivering Microsoft solutions to customers - driving customer satisfaction, innovation, winning new customers and business impact. Provoke is a fully New Zealand owned and operated company.

"As a design-led software agency, we've worked really hard to build a reputation for delivering leading-edge solutions on the Microsoft platform, with an obvious niche in SharePoint 2010. Equally as important as our technical wizardry is our unrelenting goal to deliver excellent customer service, which has underpinned our successful track-record over the years," says Mason Pratt, CEO of Provoke.

"The staff at Provoke have been hand-picked from a talented pool of software developers and UX specialists from around the world and is the key ingredient to our on-going success. We combine our skill base with a 'whatever it takes' attitude to get the job done, which adds significant value to our customers, providing them with world-class solutions."

"We are so very proud to have won this award, as it highlights our commitment to the industry and our customers, as well as our focus on driving continual improvement within our own business. It will hopefully give peace of mind to our current customers that they've backed the right horse and also encourage prospective customers to engage the best New Zealand has to offer. The recognition garnered from this win is a solid endorsement for all of our hard work."

NV Interactive was also recognised as a finalist in the Web Development category for its use of technologies like Silverlight, Web Slices and Pivot Viewer to deliver compelling live web experiences for New Zealand cricket players and fans alike.

"The Worldwide Partner Awards represent our World Cup, and we're thrilled to be recognised on the global stage for the wide range of innovative solutions we have delivered for New Zealand Cricket," says Matt Pickering, Managing Director of NV Interactive.

"We will continue to innovate with the support of Microsoft, knowing we are delivering a world beating online experience for New Zealand Cricket fans around the world."

Winners and finalists will be recognised at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011, the company's premier annual event for industry partners, being held July 10-14 in Los Angeles, California. A complete list of categories, winners and finalists, including category descriptions, is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wpc.

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