Microsoft’s 2022 Partner of the Year Awards has honoured five Australian firms as consulting firm EY Australia walked away with the partner of the year award for Australia.
This is up from just one Australian category award winner in 2021. The partner of the year for the Defense & Intelligence category was Brisbane-based Myriad Technologies, and the winner of the Device Distributor/Reseller category was Data#3, which is also headquartered in Brisbane.
Other Australian winners were end-to-end digital service provider Engage Squared, digital consulting firm Barhead Solutions, and tech consultancy Modis Consulting which won the Employee Experience, Community Response, and Inclusion Changemaker awards respectively. Engage Squared was the partner of the year for Australia in 2021.
The winner of the partner of the year for New Zealand is DEFEND Limited a threat protection and intelligence and detection-providing services specialist across Australia and New Zealand. The full list of winners can be found here.
Myriad Technologies is an information management company specialising in the provision of “zero-trust multidomain data fabric for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance interoperability”, according to Microsoft.
The firm has ongoing relationships with the Australian Defence Force, and the New Zealand Defence Force. Myriad has provided a stable replication solution of Microsoft SharePoint to enable secure communication between deployable joint forces, brigades, and battle group headquarters in remote locations. This was achieved by combining Microsoft’s technology with iOra’s Geo-replication platform.
Data#3 is the sole reseller of Microsoft licences included in the Digital Transformation Agencies whole-of-government Volume Sourcing Arrangement (VSA). The firm’s current contract is the fourth iteration of the VSA with the federal government, which began in August 2019 and will be in place until June 30, 2025. So far, the contract has exceeded $800 million in value.
As a whole-of-government arrangement, the VSA is intended to make it easier for federal government agencies to buy Microsoft products and services. The Microsoft VSA was first signed in 2009, although Data#3 has been the sole reseller of Microsoft licences to the federal government since 2008.
EY Australia was awarded Partner of the Year for Australia because of increasing uptake of Microsoft Cloud capabilities and “placing Microsoft at the centre of its data and AI efforts”. In a document announcing this year’s award recipients Microsoft highlighted a number of developments the consultancy firm has worked on in the past year.
This includes the enhancement of Westpac’s mortgage verification system, taking its document recognition power from 300-plus documents to more than 3,000 documents. Also the EY Space tech team has used AI techniques and satellite imagery to monitor water drainage and vegetation growth as well as enabling on-demand virtual interactive site visits.
Microsoft has partners in more than 100 countries providing services across cloud to edge technologies, entrepreneurial spirit, and social impact. There were 58 total category winners across seven broad categories.
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