In-Depth

Microsoft's 'Most Competent' Partners of 2015

Which Microsoft partners have racked up the most competencies in 2015? We scour the Pinpoint partner directory to find out. 

It's been about five years since Microsoft scrapped its old partner program for the much more specialty-focused Microsoft Partner Network (MPN). With its competency system, the MPN is designed to provide a more detailed picture of each partner's proficiency level compared to the previous partner program, which differentiated simply between Gold Certified and Certified partners. In terms of raw numbers, the companies in this year's "most competent" list -- the vast majority of which have gold competencies in the double digits -- display some of deepest subject-matter expertise among Microsoft partners.

Obviously, a partner's actual skill can't be measured by just tallying up the number of competencies it has. A glance through this year's Microsoft Partner of the Year winners can attest to that: Of the roughly 150 companies that Microsoft honored at the 2015 Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), only 14 have enough competencies to make it onto RCP's list. The rest average just three gold and three silver competencies. Despite that, they've each been singled out by Microsoft as "demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions."

So we offer the following list of the "most competent" partners with this caveat: The number of competencies a partner has is by no means the only way to measure its overall expertise -- but it sure is an important one.

Methodology
To compile this year's list, we pored through all 125 country directories in the Microsoft Pinpoint Web site between late May and early June, searching for the partners with the highest number of competencies. Partner rankings were determined by a point system, with partners receiving two points for each gold competency and one point for each silver competency. In cases where two or more partners had identical scores, companies with more gold competencies were ranked higher. Companies that had identical configurations of gold and silver competencies were ranked the same.

RANK COMPANY COUNTRY GOLD SILVER
1 Avanade Inc. * United States 23 3
1 Dell Inc. United States 23 3
3 Allen Brazil 20 3
4 Softline Group * Russia 17 7
5 Diyar United Company * Kuwait 18 2
6 Senetic Ltd. Poland 16 1
7 COMPAREX AG * Germany 14 5
8 Fujisoft Inc. * Japan 13 7
9 Crayon Group Norway 14 4
9 Proge-Software S.r.l. Italy 14 4
11 Neos-SDI France 12 8
12 Business Connexion * South Africa 14 3
13 InterGrupo * Colombia 13 5
14 Bechtle AG Germany 11 9
15 Sogeti * France 14 1
15 Tieto Corp. Finland 14 1
17 CGI Group Inc. Canada 12 5
17 Hewlett-Packard Development Co. L.P. United States 12 5
19 Kabel Sistemas de Información Spain 11 7
20 FRITZ & MACZIOL Germany 14 0
21 Japan Business Systems Inc. Japan 12 4
22 Softeng Spain 11 6
23 InfoShot Solutions Provider Brazil 6 16
24 Shanghai Nanyang Wanbang Software Technology Co. Ltd. China 13 1
25 Eden Information Service Ltd. China 11 5
26 AZEO France 9 9
26 Cronos nv Belgium 9 9
28 Alegri International Group Germany 9 8
28 CAD R&D Centre Progress Group AD * Bulgaria 9 8
28 Catapult Systems LLC United States 9 8
31 Change Inc. Russia 11 3
31 Dimension Data * South Africa 11 3
31 Geocent LLC United States 11 3
31 SoftwareONE AG Switzerland 11 3
35 National Education Network Egypt 9 7
36 Bitscape Infotech Pvt. Ltd. India 7 11
37 SCSK Corp. Japan 11 2
38 SoftBank Technology Corp. Japan 10 4
39 NOVABASE SGPS S.A. * Portugal 9 6
40 EVRY ASA Norway 10 3
40 New Signature * United States 10 3
42 Reply S.p.A. Italy 9 5
42 Version 1 Ireland 9 5
44 Insight United States 8 7
45 Consulting Group Corp. Costa Rica 6 11
46 Systex Corp. China 11 0
47 Agile IT Inc. United States 10 2
47 Atea ASA * Norway 10 2
47 Capgemini France 10 2
47 CDW Corp. United States 10 2
47 Fujitsu Ltd. Japan 10 2
47 Tech Data Ltd. * Korea 10 2
*2015 Microsoft Partner of the Year

About the Author

Gladys Rama (@GladysRama3) is the editorial director of Converge360.

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