The annual Microsoft Inspire awards, which this year is hosted as a digital event, has shone spotlight on the successes by partners in more than 100 countries. This year, 11 winners have been selected from 8 regions in Africa and 3 from the Levant region.
Selected based on their commitment to customers, the impact of their solutions and the exemplary use of Microsoft technologies, all winners have played a crucial role in cultivating and sustaining the powerful ecosystem as part of Microsofts greater mission on the continent at large. “As a company, we have always believed in bringing technology closer to those who need it most, allowing everyone to ultimately achieve more. We’ve been able to do this through connecting our partners with customers and each other – enabling business growth and driving digital transformation,” says Ibrahim Youssry, General Manager at Microsoft Middle East and Africa Emerging Markets.
‘Our commitment to our partners doesn’t just start and end with recognition. For success to be sustained, continuous support is required. This is why we continue to invest in the appropriate programs, training and resources that will enable our partners to generate demand for as well as scale their solutions,” continues Youssry.
Winners from the continent include Salt Essential IT from Namibia. Salt has been at the forefront of driving a modern workplace story infused with their own solutions and bundles. Particularly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Salt has been assisting customers, governments, and schools transition to Teams, also offering their security bundle. Cloudware from Ghana supports Microsoft on several accounts with true impact, leading customer face time in the field in alignment with Microsoft’s Cloud strategy. The organisation delivers workshops and support on Azure consumption by deploying customer Azure environments, which, in turn, leads to ACAs.
Cloud Productivity Solutions from Kenya focus on modern workplace and won the Global Teamwork Partner of the Year at last year’s ceremony for their phenomenal work on Teams. Since then, the organisation has continued with the drive they had of transforming customers not only on Teams but also in security and by building specific bundles for teams that push consumption and help customers lower costs. The company then made an expansion this year that saw them open an office in Uganda that is fully resourced and driving great customers initiatives on the ground.
“We continue to look at ways internally to provide innovative products and services to our partners, helping them to not only succeed but also deliver solutions that are valuable to customer needs”, concludes Youssry. “We are eager to continue working with these great partners and look forward to the great work and results over the next year”.
Appendix:
A list of all the rest of the winners below:
Wragby Business Solutions & Technologies Limited – Nigeria
Wragby Business Solutions & Technologies Limited, with its diversified and inclusive team, is a Cloud-focused Microsoft Partner in close alignment with Microsoft’s vision of digital transformational projects across customer segments. It’s a customer-centric company that identifies opportunities to help customers in different industries derive value from their investment with Microsoft with its industry IPs and extensions built on Microsoft Cloud Platforms to meet customers’ specific needs. Wragby is one of the top partners driving Azure- consumed revenue and Teams active usage across Middle East and Africa. Wragby leads Nigeria with 274 percent YoY growth in CSP revenue and a cloud mix of 88.35 percent. The partner works closely with the Microsoft sales team to drive transformational deals across every segment, identifying the Co-Sell ready partners Microsoft looks to build and sell with.
EZY Technologies, Pvt Ltd – Pakistan
Pakistan has the highest number of CSP direct partners in the region by far, so EZY Technologies faces fierce competition on pricing, credit, and eroded margins. Despite that, EZY has shown tremendous resilience and focus on training and transforming their partners so they can have the right added value, be competitive and address the customer’s needs. This enabled EZY to deliver a strong YoY growth of 151 percent on CSP and cloud business of more than 116 percent (versus a market average/country benchmark of 5.6 percent).
Cloudshift – Tunisia
Cloudshift is a born-in-the-Cloud partner and a true Microsoft player. Cloudshift, through its continuous engagement with government of Tunisia and strategic accounts in the country, has a great impact in this market. They are helping customers in their digital transformation journey by providing them advanced solutions and services to benefit from the value of the Cloud while transforming and innovating in their sector. In a tough public sector context with the challenge-related resistance to change, security, and data sovereignty, Cloudshift’s team contributed in building the digital workplace for the government of Tunisia.
Cloud Productivity Solutions Limited – Uganda
Cloud Productivity Solutions are a born-in-the-Cloud partner focusing on modern workplace. They won the Global Teamwork partner of the year last fiscal year for the phenomenal work they did on Teams. And in FY20, they continued with that same drive to transform customers, not only on Teams but through security and by building specific bundles for teams that push consumption and help customers lower costs. Cloud Productivity Solutions expanded this year, opening a fully resourced office in Uganda that is driving important customer initiatives on the ground.
Comprehensive Computing Innovations – Lebanon
Comprehensive Computing Innovations (CCI) have shown exemplary performance by helping their customers in Lebanon adopt a digital transformation strategy along with supporting them through adoption, providing the technical expertise for a seamless and hassle-free transition to the Cloud. Remarkable efforts were portrayed by CCI, supporting the customer’s shift to a remote work strategy, where CCI has deployed, enabled, and supported users in adoption and change management for more than 22,000 seats across multiple industries (Distribution, Retail, Education, Health, Government, Insurance and Banking). In addition to Teams, CCI supported customers with their datacenter modernization and ease of accessibility to systems and tools needed remotely by enabling Windows Virtual Desktop for several customers coupled with Azure Sentinel for the best security posture in the environment. CCI has created their own Managed Services Offering FastConnect that allows users to access their corporate and company systems instantly.
MC3 Cloud – Mauritius
MC3 group formed a new organisation, MC3 Cloud, managing the Cloud business of MC3 Group in MCC with its own technical, sales, telesales, and marketing teams. MC3 Cloud grew their CSP business by 121 percent and their cloud business by 84.5 percent, against a 22.8 percent benchmark. In Azure, MC3 has increased YoY by 227 percent, against a benchmark of 52 percent. This impressive performance can be attributed to the aggressive Azure plan MC3 drafted; MC3 has hired new resources both sales and presales to cover Azure, and they have invested in technical expertise and certifications. MC3 also landed the first P2Ps in the region with local ISVs and has invested in building a channel ecosystem that is solutions-oriented, rather than licensing with differentiated offering, to clearly answer the local customers’ needs. The response of MC3 to COVID-19 has clearly showed their agility and expertise. MC3 landed two new partnerships and offerings working remotely and security. They have landed other bundles with ISVs (P2P) to address the remote work needs of their customers, and they are successfully navigating their own digital transformation by digitizing all their plans so they can keep momentum and adapt to the impact of COVID-19.
Exakis Nelite – Morocco
Exakis Nelite is offering a Microsoft professional services portfolio and Cloud offers that are unique in Morocco. They are providing end-to-end solutions to both medium and large customers. More than just providing cost reduction, customers are impressed by the new and fully integrated cloud solutions Nelite provides. Additionally, Nelite did a great job this year with its efforts related to IP Co-Sell and cloud transformation in multiple accounts. They enabled customers to adopt and follow products’ evolutions in the Cloud and application innovations, Data and IA based on Power Platform and Azure services. Nelite consistently demonstrated the added value of Microsoft cloud solutions from security to power platform.
Optimiza – Jordan
Jordan Optimiza Jordan has shown exemplary performance by helping customers in Jordan adopt a digital transformation strategy along with supporting them by providing the technical expertise for a seamless and hassle-free transition to the Cloud and embracing digitization across commercial and government customers. Optimiza has worked closely with a leading large corporation with businesses that span several industries, resolving IT infrastructure complexity by moving data to the Cloud to provide the group with IT efficiency, business agility, and cost savings. Optimiza provides strong system integration by combining expertise on both Azure and Citrix for world-class virtualization for applications and desktops. Remarkable efforts were portrayed by Optimiza, supporting customers adopting a shift to a remote work strategy, whereby Optimiza has deployed, enabled, and supported users in adoption and change management for more than 16,000 seats across multiple industries (Distribution, Retail, Education, Health, Government, Insurance and Banking).
