Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the winners of its 2018 Australia and New Zealand Partner Awards, with a total of 5 partners recognised across a range of categories.

The company says the awards recognise leaders across the ANZ channel who are playing a key role in helping customers remediate technical debt and drive innovation.

Announced during the AWS Partner Summit and on the eve of the sixth AWS Sydney Summit, the AWS Partner Awards recognised a range of born-in-the cloud and established AWS Consulting and Technology Partners whose business models have embraced specialisation and innovation over the past year.

AWS also says it recognised partners whose business models continue to evolve and constantly drive costs down while innovating for customers.

AWS managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Paul Migliorini says, “AWS partners are adding value to customers across a wide range of industries, from banking and finance, to resources, the public sector, and increasingly, the Australian and New Zealand Start-up sector.

“The winners of the 2018 AWS ANZ Partner Awards are those who understand that customers can access more than 100 services to innovate in a myriad of ways – including some who bring new solutions to market and others who have been working with AWS since the launch of the AWS Sydney Region more than five years ago,” Migliorini continues.

“We are now seeing some of our partners starting to specialise and collaborate around artificial intelligence and machine learning, to power innovation for customers, in another sign it's still Day One.

A panel of AWS experts have selected the following five winners based on the below criteria:

Description: A relatively new APN partner that has achieved great success in a relatively short time.

Winner: Consegna, an Advanced tier fast-growing New Zealand partner.

Finalists:Nebulr and BNW Consulting

Description: A partner that has developed an innovative capability on or integrated with AWS, and has launched it to market during the qualification period.

Winner: Melbourne IT -  won the award for its work with a leading, top-tier Australian bank.

Finalists: DiUS Consulting and Kablamo

Description: A consulting partner who has consistently great customer outcomes throughout the qualifying period, and grown with AWS.

Winner: Versent  - won the Consulting Partner of the year award for the second year in a row and has also just been awarded Premier Partner status.

Finalists: CMD Solutions andNebulr

Description: A technology partner who has leveraged the best of AWS, the AWS APN and continued to expand and grow with AWS.

Winner: Bryte Systems - an AWS Big Data Competency partner, has won the award for its work with Vocus Communications.

Finalists: CommVault and Technology One

Description: A partner who has gone deep with AWS in a specific service, industry or competency and delivered customer success.

Winner: BNW Consulting - an SAP Competency Partner, has won the award for its work with Visy.

Finalists: Soltius and Ultraserve