New Zealand companies were among the winners and finalists announced this week in the annual Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards.

The competition – held annually in advance of the Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference – honours top Microsoft Corp partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

Awards were presented in multiple categories, with winners chosen from a set of more than 2,800 entrants from 117 different countries worldwide.

This year, 46 awards categories celebrated each of the core partner competencies, including cloud technology, Windows 8 and Office/SharePoint applications, public sector, citizenship, sales excellence and many more.

The New Zealand Country Partner of the Year Award was taken out by Provoke Solutions, while digital agency NV Interactive beat out some tough global competition to claim the Innovative Technology for Good Citizenship Award for its work in creating Boosted (www.boosted.org.nz), a philanthropic crowd-funding platform for arts projects, developed for The Arts Foundation.

Other Kiwi companies that shone at the awards included ICT integration services company Softsource, which was a finalist in the ‘Midmarket Solution Provider’ category for its work in transitioning customers to cloud services through its unique hybrid offerings.

Also, website and software development company Enlighten Designs was a finalist in the ‘Collaboration & Content’ category for its work at Mighty River Power, which helped the customer see improved productivity through a single source of truth SharePoint BI portal.

Microsoft New Zealand’s Managing Director, Paul Muckleston offered his warmest congratulations to all the local partners that received international accolades in the Partner of the Year Awards.

“While we are always passionate about driving innovation through our local partner network to grow New Zealand businesses and connect Kiwis to what matters to them, it is thrilling to see our partners’ efforts recognised in this way on the world stage,” he says.

“It is fresh inspiration for us to keep pushing ourselves forward as a nation to be globally competitive.”

Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft says the tech giant’s success as a company depends on great partners, and that New Zealand’s representation at the Partner of the Year Awards is a shining example of the kind of innovation Microsoft’s partner ecosystem drives year after year.

“We are honoured to recognise all companies at this year’s Partner of the Year Awards, and we applaud Microsoft’s New Zealand partners’ dedication to providing innovative solutions that drive results for our mutual customers,” he adds.

Partner of the Year Award winners will be recognised by their peers when they appear onstage at the Microsoft 2014 Worldwide Partner Conference to be held July 13-17 in Washington D.C.