Ideaca honoured as Partner of the Year for the second consecutive year at Microsoft Partner Awards

PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 27, 2007 – Toronto, ON - Ideaca Knowledge Services, a leading Information Technology services company that provides business application solutions to the Canadian market, announced today it has won the Partner of the Year Award for Information Worker Solutions, Portals and Enterprise Content Management at the 2007 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Program Awards. The company was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft Partners as delivering market-leading customer solutions built on Microsoft technology.  This is the second consecutive year that Ideaca has been honoured as Partner of the Year.  The awards were distributed at a ceremony on July 11 in Denver, CO at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.

Ideaca won this award for their implementation at Butterfield & Robinson, a luxury travel company that specializes in providing their customers with one-of-a-kind walking and biking tours. Butterfield & Robinson is the first company in North America to deploy a solution integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) utilizing the Business Data Catalog (BDC) for Line of Business (LOB) integration.  Ben Davies, president of Catharsis Managed IT and Director of IS for Butterfield & Robinson, worked with the Ideaca team to design and deliver a solution to align with Butterfield and Robinson’s long term strategy. The result was a unique solution that allows Butterfield & Robinson travel advisors to address customer needs directly through Outlook rather than utilizing multiple applications.  “Integrating these two systems has created a powerful and unique set of capabilities that allows us to improve the ease and efficiency with which we deliver the level of personalization and quality that our customers expect.” said Ben.

“This innovation solution, the first integration of MOSS 07 and Dynamics CRM in North America, clearly demonstrates Ideaca’s ability to develop solutions that integrate with our customers’ current infrastructures to help automate and reduce business process steps.” said Muneer Hirji, CEO, Ideaca.  “As a leading Canadian Microsoft partner, it is a tremendous achievement to be recognized out of thousands of partners worldwide as the Partner of the Year for the second consecutive year.”  

Awards were presented in a number of categories, with winners chosen from a pool of more than 1,800 entrants worldwide. Ideaca was recognized for superior technology and innovation in Information Worker Solutions, Portals and Enterprise Content Management.  The Information Worker Solutions, Portals and Enterprise Content Management Award recognizes an exceptional partner that has excelled in offering breakthrough Microsoft Office system solutions.
“Ideaca’s close relationship with Microsoft enabled them to deliver a solution that is tightly aligned with Microsoft's go-to-market strategies and to bring a deep level of technical and functional knowledge about the products in-house. By integrating Dynamics CRM with Office SharePoint Server 2007, Ideaca can provide a searchable central point of access to business information across a customer organization, delivering on the full breadth of capabilities of the Office SharePoint Server,” said Lora Gernon, Director, Partner Group, Microsoft Canada Co.

The Microsoft Partner Program Awards recognize Microsoft Partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions over the last year.