COPA-DATA two-fold 2016 Microsoft Partner of the Year
COPA-DATA, the specialist for automation software, took away not just one, but two awards at this year's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto. The solutions for Smart City with the zenon software won the worldwide Microsoft Partner award for the category ‘Public Sector: Microsoft CityNext’. As a founding member of the isv4industry software alliance, the Salzburg-based company also reached first place as ‘Microsoft Partner of the Year’ in Austria.
Microsoft's top partners are honored annually at the WPC. The excellent solution for a customer problem in interplay with the newest Microsoft technologies is the basis for the award as ‘2016 Microsoft Partner of the Year’ in a total of 37 categories. Over 2,500 nominations, submitted by companies from 119 countries were assessed by the international expert jury. So now the winners and finalists were selected in Toronto, Canada. Last year COPA-DATA already received the ‘ISV Partner of the Year’ award from Microsoft Austria. This year not just one, but two new Microsoft Partner of the Year awards were awarded, for the first time also from the worldwide category ‘Public Sector: CityNext’. COPA-DATA was honored among a global range of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementing customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.
COPA-DATA was the first company from Austria to be honored for a worldwide Microsoft Partner Award category. With the forward-looking award from the category ‘Public Sector: Microsoft CityNext’ the international jury is acknowledging the capabilities of what the zenon solutions in interplay with the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform can offer. “This is an outstanding award that represents our efforts with zenon for ever-improving technologies and innovation focusing on the Smart Cities and for smart infrastructures of tomorrow”, explains Phillip Werr, COPA-DATA Marketing Manager.
“We are honored to recognize COPA-DATA as this year’s winner of the 2016 Microsoft Partner of the Year award in the category Public Sector: Microsoft CityNext,” said Gavriella Schuster, general manager, Worldwide Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. “COPA-DATA is a prime example of the excellent talent we see in our Microsoft partner community to deliver innovative and transformative solutions to our mutual customers.”
Making cities and public infrastructures smarter
Basis for winning the award is the comprehensive IoT solution for the Slovenian renewables producer Gorenjske Elektrarne. This project used a novel solution which combines the possibilities of the zenon Product Family with Microsoft’s cloud services. Gorenjske Elektrarne is a subsidiary of Elektro Gorenjska, one of Slovenia’s leading energy utility companies. It specializes in the development of power from renewable sources, including solar and hydroelectric power. Given the nature of its decentralized power sources in mountainous Slovenia, a mobile, remote technology structure and robust solution needed to be found. For the last ten years Gorenjske Elektrarne has counted on zenon for its local control and monitoring system. Furthermore, zenon was established as a SCADA system for decentralized monitoring of a total of 23 photovoltaic plants, 15 hydroelectric power plants and three combined cycle plants across Slovenia. The process data is read directly from the PLCs and is thereby able to deliver maximum power plant control in just one software system.
Geographical constraints forced Gorenjske Elektrarne to find a new location-independent approach for reliable and flexible operations of its equipment. The solution was the combination of zenon with Microsoft Azure. Today, the complete integration of zenon in these cloud services, including the Azure RemoteApp, allows engineers to gain a decentralized real-time overview of all applications from any web-enabled mobile device via a Remote Desktop client. This saves time, increases knowledge exchange and allows network monitoring from anywhere, while realizing data security by the Microsoft cloud platform at the same time. Further small power plants will soon be connected to the flexible, scalable system with zenon and Azure.
Microsoft Partner of the Year in Austria: the isv4industry software alliance
The isv4industry alliance, founded at the end of 2015 by four Austrian companies, wins the Microsoft Partner of the Year award for Austria in its first year of existence. COPA-DATA is a founding member together with augmensys, icomedias and PROLOGICS. isv4industry has the goal of showing industrial corporations the concrete value of the newest technological developments and implementing these in practice by means of existing infrastructures. The alliance is taking new, innovative paths in digitalization of networked corporate areas that were never covered, or only minimally, up until now. “As successful and sophisticated the individual technologies may be, it is clear to all collaboration members that only together can we offer our customers comprehensive and lucrative solutions for the Smart Factory in context of Industry 4.0”, explains Johannes Petrowisch, COPA-DATA Global Partner & Business Development Manager, on the success of the project initiated by the four software companies.
Winning two ‘Partner of the Year’ awards ranks COPA-DATA as one of the most successful participants at this year`s WPC. Here is a list of the winners and finalists of all ‘Microsoft Partner of the Year’ categories.
source: COPA-DATA