Ashley Watkins (Trend Micro)
Cyber security solutions vendor Trend Micro has celebrated its top-performing partners from Australia and New Zealand for 2021.
Announced during the vendor's annual CLOUDSEC conference, the nine awards recognised seven organisations and two individuals who drove success in 2021 through collaboration and a customer-first mindset, Trend Micro said.
At a company end, Spark New Zealand claimed the prize for Hybrid Cloud Security Partner of the Year, while Sydney's Platinum Technology won the award as the best-performing MSP.
Australia's Data#3 scored the prize in the security category as Dicker Data was named the distribution winner.
On an individual level, Insight business development manager Peter Lyons was named as Trend Micro's best sales performer, while NTT cyber security director Dirk Hodgson won in the technical category.
This year, saw Trend Micro add the new categories of Cloud Native Partner of the Year, Growth Partner of the Year, and TRENDsCampus Partner of the Year.
The first award was claimed by Brisbane-based Itoc, while Insight was the night's growth winner. Rounding out the awards was blueAPACHE, which was the TRENDsCampus winner.
"These have been added to reflect the important role of the partner ecosystem in driving rapid digitalisation with security at the centre," Trend Micro added.
This year also saw Trend Micro ramp up its local presence by launching a point of presence (PoP) in Australia using a Sydney data centre.
The company’s First Cloud One will be hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and operated on a 24-hour basis by Trend Micro.
“Local organisations have been faced with navigating new cyber threats such as breach-based ransomware, managing hybrid workforces, and keeping up with regulatory and compliance matters," said Ashley Watkins, VP of commercial at Trend Micro A/NZ.
"As such, security has become an integral part of long-term success for local organisations, and the role of partners in helping customers to tackle these challenges head on with robust security solutions is more important than ever."
The winners are in full:
- Hybrid Cloud Security Partner of the Year – Spark New Zealand
- Cloud Native Partner of the Year – Itoc
- MSP Partner of the Year – Platinum Technology
- Distributor of the Year – Dicker Data Australia
- Growth Partner of the Year – Insight
- TRENDsCampus Partner of the Year – blueAPACHE
- Security Partner of the Year – Data#3
Individual awards
- Top Gun, Sales Award – Peter Lyons, Insight
- Top Gun, Technical Award – Dirk Hodgson, NTT
