KUALA LUMPUR (25 July 2014) – At the recent Microsoft Corp. World Partner Conference (“WPC”), Fusionex was once again announced as the 2014 Microsoft Country Partner of the Year Award for Malaysia, having won the award three years in a row now. Fusionex was also announced as a finalist for Application Integration Partner of the Year. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft Corp. partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.
“We are proud to be recognized for our commitment to excellence on this global stage. It is very fulfilling for the team to receive these prestigious awards as a testament to our commitment to excellence and partnership with Microsoft,” says Ivan Teh, Managing Director of Fusionex. “We look forward to building on from here and continuing our rewarding partnership with the team at Microsoft!”
Awards winners chosen from a set of more than 2,800 entrants from 117 different countries worldwide. The Microsoft Country Partner of the Year Awards honor partners at the country level that have demonstrated business excellence in delivering Microsoft solutions to multiple customers over the past year. Fusionex was recognized for being successful in effectively engaging with Microsoft Malaysia while showcasing innovation and business impact, driving customer satisfaction and winning new customers.
“We are pleased to recognize Ivan and his team at Fusionex as a Microsoft Country Partner of the Year as well as a finalist for Application Integration Partner of the Year,” said Azizah Ali, General Manager, Small and Medium Solutions and Partners of Microsoft Malaysia. “Fusionex has delivered outstanding value to our mutual customers and is an exceptional example of the excellence we see in our brightest Microsoft partners.”
Putting partners first in a mobile-first, cloud-first world
The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards demonstrates how putting partners first in Microsoft’s go-to-market strategy has always been key and will continue to be a priority in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. In fact, Microsoft has the largest partner ecosystem in the industry, investing over US$5 billion annually in channel operation, also the largest amount in the industry. In Malaysia alone, the company maintains over 5,000 partners nationwide, the largest in the Malaysia IT industry.
At this year’s WPC, Microsoft Corp. also made several announcements that put partners at the center of customer cloud adoption, including:
- To better help partners serve customers in the cloud, Microsoft announced it was integrating the cloud into the Microsoft Partner Network, with three new cloud-focused competencies based on performance for Office 365 and Microsoft Azure. The new competencies are: Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions, for partners selling Microsoft Office 365 to small and mid-market customers; Cloud Productivity, for partners deploying Microsoft Office 365 for enterprise customers; and Cloud Platform, for partners who specialize in delivering infrastructure, PaaS and SaaS solutions on Microsoft Azure.
- Microsoft Corp. also announced the Azure Machine Learning University, a portfolio of online self-service learning assets designed to get partners started with Azure Machine Learning. Machine Learning University will provide partners with an overview of Azure ML, and walk through the data science life cycle from importing data to building predictive models and deploying in production.
- The Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider program allows partners to own 100 percent of the customer lifecycle, with partners serving as the only contact for all customer needs, including: billing, provisioning, support and, most importantly, the ability to sell their own tools, products and services.
- Customer adoption of Microsoft Azure continues to accelerate, with an average of more than 1,000 customers signing up every day. Building on some 5,000 partner apps and services running or ready for use on Azure today, Microsoft Corp. announced the Azure Certified program, a new logo certification program will empower Microsoft partners to grow their business through new opportunities to promote and sell their applications and services on Azure.
Partners increasing profitability & monetizing the cloud with Microsoft
Microsoft has increasingly shown how its partners can build profitable business models with the cloud, most recently, through the latest version of its IDC-commissioned research, which outlines actionable insights for partners into how they can achieve profitability in the cloud.
In fact, Microsoft’s cloud-oriented partners, defined as those who generate more than 50% of their revenue from the cloud, grow at 2X the rate; accrue new customers more than 2X faster; and generate 30% more revenue per employee compared with non-cloud-oriented partners.
The opportunity in the cloud growing: it is anticipated that there will be 7M estimated new cloud jobs worldwide by 2015 and 6X growth rate of needed cloud skills vs. the growth rate of IT skills overall. Cloud-related skills represent virtually all of the growth opportunities in IT worldwide and will grow by 26% annually through 2015 with more than 40% of new cloud-related jobs will be in emerging markets.
“Against this backdrop, the announcements at WPC are designed to make it more valuable, less expensive, and easier for partners to do business with Microsoft. Together we have a unique opportunity to help customers embrace the mobile-first, cloud first world with a differentiated vision for the future,” concluded Azizah.
Visit www.digitalwpc.com for more videos and information on the 2014 World Partner Conference. Additional WPC news is available on the Microsoft News Center.
