Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.

Through technology innovations, we are inspiring our customers and showing them the potential, but our mission cannot be realised alone. Our partners play a critical role in helping us deliver on that promise.

We are grateful every day for the commitment and contribution of all our partners. And some days we get to celebrate them in special ways, such as at the recent ARN Innovation Awards.

This year it was a chance to pay tribute to the more than 70 partners and start-ups who were the finalists and winners of the 2018 awards. We at Microsoft were delighted to sponsor the event and our Managing Director Steven Worrall was genuinely thrilled to be able to present awards to three Hall of Fame Inductees – Alex Gambotto, Felix Wong and Ken Boal.

Alex is co-owner and CEO of IT solutions business, The Missing Link; Felix has led the transformation of Ingram Micro as chief country executive A/NZ; and Ken is vice president for Cisco Systems in Australia and New Zealand.

For the last 12 years ARN has celebrated a handful of the channel’s peak achievers by awarding them Hall of Fame status for their long-term commitment to the Australian industry. Alex, Felix and Ken are all very worthy recipients.

We understand and appreciate the great efforts that all of our partners in the channel make every day to ensure the users of our products and services reap maximum benefit for their business and their people.

In Australia we work with 10,000 partners employing around 300,000 Australians who go to work every day to help their customers achieve more with.