Microsoft is delighted to support ARN’s 2019 Innovation Awards and pay tribute to all partners and start-ups who are finalists. Partners are the lifeblood of the Australian technology sector and the key to customer success and innovation.

Additionally, it is a privilege to support the ARN Hall of Fame award, which recognises talented individuals for their service and excellence across the industry.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. To do this, Microsoft invests billions of dollars each year on Resource and Development (R&D), and in Australia we work with more than 10,000 partners and their 300,000 employees who go to work every day to help their customers achieve more.

It’s the combination of innovation and impact, which all the nominated partners embody, that’s so important to businesses and the Australian economy.

These range from partners dedicated to security to cloud adoption to digital transformation, all of which are vital in helping businesses stay competitive and successful in 2019. These partners are doing work that isn’t just being recognised in Australia, but also at a global level. One such example is Antares (The Cloud Collective), finalist in the Smart Technology category, which recently received praise from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at a global conference for their work in education. Antares created a solution to help engineering students at UNSW improve collaboration, share information faster and scale the learning experience, all through artificial intelligence (AI) and Microsoft Teams.

It is innovation like this, and those of all the nominated partners, that is empowering every person and every organisation to achieve more. Congratulations to all the finalists!