Microsoft Announces Award Winners at Fusion 2002

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LOS ANGELES, July 13, 2002 — Microsoft Corp. today released the names of the winners of the Microsoft®
Certified Partner Awards, the Global Network Service Provider (NSP) Awards, the Global Services Partner of the Year Award, and the Microsoft Project 2002 Business Value Solution Challenge (BVC). The winners were announced last night during an awards ceremony at Microsoft Fusion 2002, the company’s premier annual partner event.

Certified Partner Awards

The Certified Partner Awards recognize Microsoft Certified Partners that have demonstrated excellence in emerging technologies. Winners were chosen from 52 finalists in nine categories and were determined based on their innovative use of Microsoft’s latest technologies to develop exemplary solutions for their customers. The Microsoft Certified Partner Program helps partners build successful Microsoft technology-based businesses by offering a variety of resources including training, technical support, products and peer-networking opportunities. This year’s Certified Partner Award winners are as follows:

  • .NET Application of the Year — AP Automation & Productivity AG. AP Automation & Productivity AG (AP AG) is a German company with 10 years expertise in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Its future-oriented ERP System P2plus is an Internet-based extended ERP system that supports business processes in a unified system structure with a unified user interface and provides e-business partners with a consistent Internet orientation. P2plus is directed toward medium-sized companies (those with 50 to 1,000 employees) in industry and trade. In 2001, as part of a Microsoft .NET early Adopter Program, P2plus was completely converted to the .NET Platform.

  • Anti-Piracy Advocate of the Year — ASAP Software. ASAP Software is the IT industry’s first software licensing services provider, offering a fast, reliable and economical way for large and midtier organizations to acquire software, services and add-on hardware products. Before, ASAP’s clients were using labor-intensive asset management tools that didn’t have software application management or license monitoring functions. ASAP solved its clients’ business needs by offering the eSMART business solution. ASAP eSMART is a hosted service that collects software and hardware asset data from Internet and network-connected PCs, servers, PDAs, routers and printers on various platforms across all enterprises. It presents detailed, real-time reports via the Internet, giving administrators an instant view of software license status by application or publisher and enabling them to resolve noncompliance issues quickly.

  • Business Intelligence Solution of the Year — Quadrus Development Inc. Quadrus, an IT professional services firm based in Canada, is positioned to meet the IT solution needs of companies of all sizes, across industry sectors. In January 2001, the Alberta government deregulated local electricity markets, creating the need for electricity distributors, marketers and retailers to definitively track and report energy generation and usage. ENMAX Energy Corp., a marketer and retailer of electricity in Alberta, needed to reconcile energy received from its distributors against consumption by its clients. Quadrus developed a solution for ENMAX that allows settlement between all distributors and ENMAX’s clients. The solution splits the cumulative consumption down to the hourly level based on a load shape value — a value that attempts to mimic the consumption pattern of various types of customers. The ability of Microsoft SQL Server (TM) to easily integrate different platforms into one solution allowed the workload to be distributed, which was crucial to the technical success of the project.

  • Collaborative Solution of the Year — Avanade Inc. (Brazil). Avanade’s services are organized around three practice areas: technology infrastructure, .NET Solutions development and enterprise collaboration. Avanade’s customer wanted to improve the productivity of its knowledge workers, streamline its decision-making process, and increase profits by leveraging the collaboration among its peers. It needed a corporate portal to accommodate its more than 10,000 users, maintain a high level of security, and incorporate a design that could be leveraged across systems. Avanade provided a portal solution that combines several Microsoft products and is one of the first .NET solutions implementations in Brazil.

  • E-Commerce Solution of the Year — Navantis Inc. Navantis, a Canadian company, focuses on the role of technology in business model and future plans; more than 95 percent of its projects are based entirely on Microsoft technology. Trade Settlement Inc., Navantis’ client, is a New York-based financial institution that provides a unique service to investment banks such as Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston and JP Morgan Chase. Its mission was to replace a paper-based, highly error-prone, slow and labor- intensive manual process with an improved system that the world’s top investment banks could use to secure major secondary bond deals and syndicate 10-figure loans. Navantis provided a Microsoft-based financial solution, designed to handle trillions of dollars in flow-through, a marketplace and transaction space for syndicated loans.

  • Infrastructure Solution of the Year — Ness-ING Ltd. Ness Technologies is a global provider of information technology services with offices in the United States, the Middle East and Europe. Its client, Clalit Health Services, needed a managed information infrastructure to serve medical teams and insured members in a unified, easy-to-use manner. Clalit Health had been managing its member database on a mainframe, using legacy custom-made applications for financial and administrative chores. Ness’s solution was to concentrate on Microsoft technologies for the low and middle tiers of the infrastructure. It implemented the Active Directory® directory service as an end-to-end solution and replaced NetWare and Solaris systems with Windows®
    2000 servers. Windows 2000 is now the standard platform for the desktop, and SQL Server 2000 is the database of choice.

  • CTEC Solution of the Year — Netscope Training (Pty) Ltd. Based in South Africa, Netscope Training focuses exclusively on Microsoft .NET training solutions. It takes pride in offering innovative learning solutions that fuse emerging technologies with pioneering training methodologies. Its MIT (Mastering Information Technology) course, designed for students seeking IT careers, is developed to provide a high level of skill in Visual Basic®
    .NET, Visual C# (TM) , ASP.NET, XML and other areas. In addition to coursework, students gain valuable work experience through internships with Microsoft partners. Many were offered permanent positions with these industry leaders, validating the rigorous training they received with the MIT program and relevant Microsoft certification.

  • Packaged Application of the Year — Municipal Software Corp. Municipal Software, based in Canada, provides process automation solutions to local governments. The philosophy behind its CityView product is to provide customers with flexible and customizable solutions to increase efficiency, enhance integration, and interface with GIS information and the Web through a single interface. Moyer & Associates, a server provider to local government, used CityView to distribute automation to its local government clients as an application service provider (ASP). CityView 8.NET allowed clients to access their forms and information over the Web and enabled Moyer to combine its information and licensing into a single database, while giving each client access only to the records for its own jurisdiction. This ability is a significant advantage, because it reduces Moyer’s cost of doing business, and its clients’ cost to use Moyer’s services.

  • Small Business Solution of the Year — Inetium Inc. Inetium is a U.S.-based consulting firm that delivers innovative solutions built on Microsoft software to small and medium- sized businesses in the Upper Midwest market. Inetium’s strategy is to develop intimate business relationships with its accounts and provide them with a broad range of Microsoft-centric technical services. Its client Brandi Anderson Homes, a home-building company, needed to improve its level of customer service for homebuyers, streamline production operations, and use the Internet for marketing. Inetium’s solution allowed Brandi Anderson to dynamically manage the homes for sale on the marketing side of its Web site and manage all facets of the home-building process, including the creation and communication of bids, purchase orders, change orders, and billing and payment schedules. The solution utilized a SQL Server database and gave Brandi Anderson the ability to update the database via wireless handheld, desktop and Web applications.

CRN Best in Show Award

In conjunction with the Certified Partner Awards, CRN Magazine chose two CRN Best in Show winners from the Certified Partner Award winners. The Best in Show awards were presented during the general session today by CRN’s Senior editor, Steven Burke. The awards honor solution providers with innovative approaches to working with vendors and customers. Awards were given in two categories: Small Business and Enterprise. The award recipients are Inetium in the Small Business category and Navantis in the Enterprise category.

Global Services Partner of the Year

The Microsoft Global Services Partner of the Year Special Recognition Award is given to the global services partner that has demonstrated leadership in developing and delivering enterprise-class solutions based on the Microsoft platform. This year, Microsoft’s regional partner management leaders worldwide selected Unisys Corp. as the winner. A global alliance partner since 1997, Unisys has excelled in delivering highly scalable and available business solutions for some of the largest organizations in the world. This year Unisys established a number of milestones for the Microsoft platform, including publishing industry-leading systems benchmarks on Windows 2000 Datacenter Server systems, establishing Centers of Excellence to support the global ISV community for highly scalable systems, and developing customer projects that extended and fully exploited the capability of Windows 2000 Datacenter and SQL Server 2000.

Global Network Services Provider of the Year

The Global Service Provider of the Year Awards are given to outstanding Microsoft Gold Certified Partners. The Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Program was created to provide market recognition to companies providing hosting and application services that, through the program’s certification process, have demonstrated a consistent, high-quality delivery of specific solutions built on Microsoft technology such as the .NET Framework. The winners are as follows:

  • Hosting and Application Services Award Winner — Apptix. Apptix was recognized for its innovative use of the latest Microsoft technologies to deliver exceptional hosting and applications services to customers. Microsoft chose Apptix from hosting and application services providers around the globe for its packaged application services, operational capabilities, quality of service delivery and end-customer satisfaction. Utilizing Microsoft Exchange 2000, the Apptix private-label solution offers service providers faster time to market, reduced total cost of ownership and revenue growth. For this and other distinct offerings, such as the Apptix’s Revenue Assurance Services program, designed to help Apptix’s service provider partners successfully market and sell hosted services, Apptix is recognized for its leadership with this prestigious award.

  • Application Infrastructure Award Winner — divine inc. divine was recognized for its advanced and innovative use of Microsoft’s latest technologies, including the .NET platform, to deliver exceptional managed solutions to customers. Microsoft chose divine from application infrastructure providers from around the globe for its application service development platform, communication services, operational capabilities, quality of service delivery and end-customer satisfaction. This prestigious award recognizes divine for its leadership in providing highly reliable and scalable managed services with distinctive technologies such as the divine digitalOps automation platform for the full life-cycle management of customer systems in a hosted environment.

Business Value Solution Challenge

The Project 2002 Business Value Solution Challenge winners were chosen in two categories, Overall Solutions and Vertical Solutions. The winners are as follows:

Overall Solutions Category

  • Grand Prize — Immedient Corp.

  • Second Place — BST Software

  • Third Place — Capstone Planning & Control Inc.

  • Fourth Place — Business Engine

Vertical Solutions Category

  • Financial Services — Business Engine

  • Manufacturing — Capstone Planning & Control Inc.

  • Energy — Hewlett-Packard Co.

  • Professional Services — Pcubed

More information about the Project 2002 Business Value Solution Challenge Award winners can be found in the Microsoft Project 2002 virtual pressroom at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/project2002/default.asp .

About Fusion

Since its debut in 1996, Microsoft Fusion has become the largest and most anticipated worldwide partner event of the year, providing valuable information, networking opportunities and product exhibits for Microsoft partners. Premier event sponsors for Fusion 2002 are Intel Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM Corp. More information can be found at http://www.microsoftfusion.com/.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.

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The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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