IN PICTURES: Your channel round-up, w/e July 5 (+30 photos)

CRM Online has been named SugarCRM’s most valuable partner in the Asia-Pacific region. CRM Online CEO, Glenn Richmond, said the award was presented to the company based on its significant customer renewal rates, new business development and technology contributions to SugarCRM’s ecosystem. Richmond claimed that the award is also a testament to CRM Online’s commitment to innovation and customer service. “We are constantly looking for ways to help businesses better engage with their customers, whether it’s through better integration between CRM and Cloud accounting or seamless integration or by leveraging lead social analytics platforms to improve customer engagement,” he said. The announcement comes off the back of CRM Online’s expansion plans across Australia and into Asia, having opened a new office in Sydney, Melbourne and the Philippines in the last 12 months. In this photo: CRM Online’s Sean Hourigan, Chris Hall, and Glenn Richmond
CommsChoice has gained the A/NZ gold partner status from FaceMe for its telecommunications solution integration with FaceMe’s video conferencing and collaboration tool. CommsChoice CEO, Grant Ellison, said the company was searching for a way to provide its customers access to an intuitive, can’t-go-wrong video and collaboration tool when it found FaceMe. “We looked all over the world – from small to large vendors – looking for the best video conferencing and collaboration option for our clients that is secure and easy to use and we just couldn’t go past FaceMe,” he said. FaceMe was awarded the winner of the highly contested Virgin Business Challenge by entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson. Branson noted the growing importance of mentoring and collaboration in successful business when awarding the inventors of FaceMe the title. In this photo: Sir Richard Branson with FaceMe staff.
CA Technologies recently toured three Australian cities to host its third CA Partner Exchange (CAPE) Day. The cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra played host to more than 90 CA Technologies partners and representatives that gathered to talk about the latest market trends and about how CA Technologies can help build momentum for their businesses. The afternoon of networking and series of talks shed light on ways in which CA Technologies is addressing the issues of Big Data, mobility and Cloud. In this photo: CA Technologies’ Carl Terrantroy and Robert Watson with Synergistix’s Darren Byrnes.
CA Technologies partners were also the first to hear about the company’s new rewards and rebate program for partner sales people. CA Technologies A/NZ senior director for partners, Carl Terrantroy, highlighted the importance for vendors to maintain strong relationships with their partners and to provide them with the tools and training they need to add value in a competitive market. “CAPE Day was our way of reassuring our partners that we are committed to them and to growing our channel business in the A/NZ markets,” he said.
Insight recently hosted a client event with Microsoft and Veeam, focusing on the private Cloud and virtualisation. Held at the Microsoft office in Sydney, Insight looked at how the Cloud presents an opportunity to redefine the role IT plays in implementing business strategy. In addition, Microsoft presented on its system center technology and how it helps clients manage their IT environments, while Veeam made a presentation on monitoring with system center operations manager and Veeam MP. In this photo: Insight staff present to the attendees.
Insight practice area manager, Alessandro Cardoso, also took the opportunity to launch his new book – the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012, Cookbook. The book covers architecture design, planning and is full of deployment tips, techniques, and solutions designed to show users how to improve VMM 2012 in a real-world scenario. “I have written this book for solutions, architects, technical consultants, administrators, and any other virtualisation lover who needs to use Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 in a real-world environment,” Cardoso said. In this photo: Insight staff present to the attendees.
11 Australian ICT students from various universities have undertaken a three week long travel to China to learn the latest technology trends with Huawei. The China Exchange program is the latest of Huawei’s partnership programs with Australian Universities. Universities participating in the China Exchange program include Macquarie University, University of Ballarat, University of Melbourne, LaTrobe University, Deakin University, Monash University, Victoria University, RMIT, and Swinburne University, along with Box Hill TAFE. Students were selected based on their academic performance, a desire to broaden their knowledge of telecoms and technology issues, and their interest in gaining experience in Chinese business and culture. In this photo: Huawei Australia director, John Brumby, with a group of the students
amaysim has won the Canstar Blue Most Satisfied Customers for Prepaid Mobile Services award, reinforcing its position as a telco that’s making waves in the mobile market. The Canstar Blue Awards are based on direct feedback given to an independent research firm by customers, ranking mobile providers across value for money, service, accessibility, network coverage and ultimately overall satisfaction. amaysim founder and CEO, Rolf Hansen, said that amaysim winning this award is a timely reminder that choosing a low-cost telco doesn’t have to mean missing out on service and value. “Until recently, telco customer satisfaction has been a pretty foreign concept. With people realising they can shop around for a better deal and push for more from their current providers, we’re seeing long-overdue changes starting to happen,” he said. In this photo: amaysim CEO and founder, Rolf Hansen
Oriel was named the Riverbed A/NZ partner of the year 2013 award at the company’s recent 2013 Riverbed Asia-Pacific and Japan Partner Summit in Macau. The company also nabbed the 2013 A/NZ service provider of the year award for best new service based on Whitewater. Oriel said, in a statement, that it is proud to be recognised for its success and growth.It added that high demand for solutions in these areas has seen the company invest in skills and capabilities to become a Riverbed Diamond Partner, Riverbed Managed Services Provider and Riverbed Authorised Support Partner. It has also led to the launch of a range of related services - Managed WAN Optimisation and Managed Cloud Backup – to meet the increasing requirements of its customers. In this photo: Oriel picks up its Riverbed award
Ever wanted to put all that testosterone to work and figure out who the alpha male (or female) is in the office? Such opportunities rarely present themselves, but they did recently at Adobe. To help Adobe’s A/NZ managing director, Paul Robson, and senior director of global services, Helene Do reach their collective donation target of $10,000 for Vinnies CEO Sleepout, the company held a special event - sumo style. In this photo: Adobe's Steve Martin
This saw the Adobe A/NZ management team take part in some friendly sumo wrestling wearing full sumo gear. Head of channels, Steve Martin, reigned as sumo champion, and more than $1000 was raised on the day. Robson and Do aim to raise awareness of homelessness in Australia, and hope their fund-raising for the CEO Sleepout will help eliminate homelessness. In this photo: Adobe's Paul Robson and Lindsay Brown
Everyone needs to get away from the office occasionally and into an environment where a change of scenery stimulates the brain cells. Business software developer, Greentree International, and its top 11 A/NZ vendor partners recently enjoyed some time in Vietnam and Cambodia at its quarterly channel partner summit. In this photo: Cooking lessons in the Cambodian heat
Greentree said the conference was a strategic session for the partners, business owners, and Greentree’s senior management personnel. During the conference, they discussed developing innovative business products and opening new global markets as the current customer base extends from A/NZ, to the UK and USA. In this photo: Dinner afloat
The long-term planning discussions were also punctuated with some fun activities ranging from fishing in traditional woven boats, to cooking classes and visits to ancient temples. In this photo: Visiting Ta Prohm
Wardy IT Solutions has won the Microsoft global platform partner of the year award. The Microsoft partner of the year awards honour global partners for delivering innovative solutions that directly address customer challenges. Microsoft said winners were selected based on their commitment to customers, their solutions’ market impact and use of Microsoft technologies. Wardy IT Solutions founder and chief technical architect, Peter Ward, said the company was granted the 2013 award for its work in SQL Server platform solutions over the last 12 months. “We are delighted to have received a Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year Award from amongst an international field of Microsoft’s top partners, and on top of the APAC Partner of the Year Awards we have received annually since 2009,” he said. The award winners for 2013 will be recognised at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference this July in Houston, Texas. In this photo: Wardy IT Solutions founder and chief technical architect, Peter Ward
Veeam Software has been recognised with an HP AllianceOne partner of the year award for Converged Storage at HP Discover in Las Vegas. According to HP, the AllianceOne partner of the year award for converged storage honors Veeam Software for the improvements in Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) users can achieve by combining Veeam Backup & Replication with HP StoreVirtual Storage and HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage snapshots. In this photo: Veeam's Billy Reynold with the award
Veeam Software Asia-Pacific regional director, Don Williams, said the company views HP as a vital strategic partner and customers have come to rely on their joint solution to protect their VMware and Hyper-V workloads. “Our upcoming release of Veeam Backup & Replication v7 will further strengthen this relationship by adding ability to back up from HP StoreVirtual Storage and HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage snapshots, which will exponentially improve recovery point objectives (RPOs),” he said. In this photo: Veeam picks up the award from HP
Not-for-profit mobile telecommunications industry recycling program, MobileMuster, has announced the winners of the 2013 Local Government Awards at the National General Assembly of Local Government in Canberra. These awards recognise the commitment councils from around Australia have made to ensure local communities keep old mobiles out of landfill. The councils presented with awards include: City of Monash (Victoria) for the top collector overall award; Bruce Rock Shire Council (WA) for the top collector per capita award; Camden Council (NSW) and The Hills Shire (NSW) for the best promoter award; and the City of Vincent (WA) won the national excellence award. The Hills Shire (NSW) also nabbed the working with schools award. Since the Local Government Awards commenced in 2007, MobileMuster has opened up the awards nominations to more than 340 councils that work in partnership with the recycling program. “Recycling through the program last year replaced the need to mine over 1165 tonnes of precious metals and had the environmental benefit of planting 5600 trees – our council partners play an important part in this impact,” MobileMuster recycling manager, Rose Read, said. In this photo: All the winners with MobileMuster recycling manager, Rose Read
Distribution Central (DC) recently held cocktail events in Sydney and Melbourne to celebrate of its new partnership with Fujitsu.
DC is now a value-added distributor of Fujitsu’s Primergy server range across A/NZ. This marks the first foray for the distie in the server market.
More than 70 DC partners attended the events at the CBD Hotel in Sydney and the Emerald Peacock in Melbourne, where they enjoyed delicious canapés, drinks and heard from DC managing director, Nick Verykios, on the Fujitsu’’s new Product on Demand (POD) solutions.
Verykios claimed DC will be able to deliver scalable solutions to enable customers to grow along with their business.
"We'll be doing a lot of training on POD configurations for Cloud and other DC PODs we'll put out where the computer layer is essential. We'll provide the configuration tools and engineering services that will allow that multiple vendor offering to go to market," he said.
Pics from DC and Fujitsu's partnership
Pics from DC and Fujitsu's partnership
Pics from DC and Fujitsu's partnership
Pics from DC and Fujitsu's partnership
Pics from DC and Fujitsu's partnership
Pics from DC and Fujitsu's partnership
Pics from DC and Fujitsu's partnership