Microsoft honours industrial software developer.

COPA-DATA, took away not just one, but two awards at this year's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto (CDN). The solutions for Smart City with the zenon software won the worldwide Microsoft Partner award in the ‘Public Sector: Microsoft CityNext’ category. 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.

Gavriella Schuster with Philip Werr

Microsoft's top partners are honoured annually at the WPC. This year, the international expert jury assessed over 2,500 nominations from 119 countries. The finalists and winners were revealed in Toronto, Canada.

Last year, COPA-DATA received the ‘ISV Partner of the Year’ award from Microsoft Austria. This year the company was honoured amongst the top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementing customer solutions based on Microsoft technology across the Globe.

COPA-DATA is the first company from Austria to receive a worldwide Microsoft Partner Award. With the progressive award from the ‘Public Sector: Microsoft CityNext’ category, the international jury acknowledged the capabilities that zenon can offer in collaboration with the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform.

“This is an outstanding award that represents our efforts with zenon for ever-improving technologies and innovation focusing on the Smart Cities and smart infrastructures of tomorrow,” explained Phillip Werr, COPA-DATA Marketing Manager.

“We are honoured to recognise COPA-DATA as this year’s winner of the 2016 Microsoft Partner of the Year award in the Public Sector: Microsoft CityNext category,” 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. ” Basis for winning the award is the comprehensive IoT solution for the Slovenian renewables producer Gorenjske Elektrarne. This project used an innovative solution that 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 specialises in the development of power from renewable sources, including solar and hydroelectric power. 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 decentralised monitoring of a total of 23 photovoltaic plants, 15 hydroelectric power plants and three combined cycle plants across Slovenia. Combined cycle plants use gas and steam turbines to produce up to 50 per cent more electricity from the same fuel as a traditional single cycle plant.

The isv4industry alliance, founded in 2015, was awarded 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 aims to show industrial corporations the concrete value of the newest technological developments in existing infrastructures.

“As successful and sophisticated as the individual technologies may be, it is clear to all collaboration members that only together we can 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.

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