The Licensing Software Asset Management Specialization Award Winner  —   ASAP Software This award recognizes partners that have developed new approaches to simplifying license acquisition, management and planning to make the process seamless, positive and effective for their customers. MINNEAPOLIS, July 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) today announced the winners of the 2005 Microsoft® Partner of the Year Awards. The awards recognize Microsoft Registered, Certified and Gold Certified partners that delivered exemplary solutions for their customers during the past year. Award winners were chosen from a group of finalists from around the world. Winners were announced at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference 2005, the company's premier annual event for industry partners, held this year in Minneapolis. In addition, Microsoft announced the winners of the Global Enterprise Services and Technology Partner of the Year, Global ISV Partner of the Year, Customer Experience of the Year, and Winning Customer of the Year awards.

More than 1,800 entries were submitted by partners worldwide; the award winners were selected from a group of finalists based on their dedicated use of Microsoft technologies to provide solutions for their customers' needs. Finalists for each category were chosen from defined regions of the world: Asia; Canada; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); Latin America; the South Pacific; and the United States.
The Microsoft Partner of the Year Award winners were honored in the following categories, each of which represents a particular business practice area or partner business model. Winners were selected for both a Technology Innovation Award and a Sales and Marketing Award in each category: Advanced Infrastructure Solutions; Business Intelligence Solutions; Custom Development Solutions; Information Worker Solutions; Integrated E-Business Solutions; ISV/Software Solutions; Learning Solutions; Licensing Solutions -- Delivery Solutions and Licensing Solutions -- Software Asset Management; Microsoft Business Solutions; Mobility Solutions; Networking Infrastructure Solutions; OEM Hardware Solutions; Security Solutions; and Small Business Solutions. In addition to announcing the Partner of the Year Award winners, Microsoft honored the Specialization Excellence Award winners for each category, based on a partner's demonstrated ability to deliver specific solutions within a specialized subset of Microsoft's competency areas.

Microsoft also honored the winners of the Special Initiative Awards in the Winning Customer Award and Customer Experience Award categories. The Winning Customer Award recognizes the successful implementation of solutions on the Microsoft platform, resulting in the migration of customers to Microsoft technologies from competing technologies such as Novell Inc.'s NetWare, UNIX, Linux or others. Partners received this award by expertly developing customer solutions that exemplify the benefit of working on the Microsoft platform rather than those of other technology vendors.

The Customer Experience Award recognizes outstanding customer service that partners have provided to their customers by demonstrating their understanding of customers' needs, and honors partners' ingenuity in developing unique and relevant approaches to customer outreach.

In addition to the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards, CMP Media LLC selected four partners to receive the CRN/Microsoft Best in Show Awards. These awards highlight innovative solutions developed by channel partners that serve as a source of inspiration for the entire channel. These solutions leverage a keen understanding of specific customer needs with emerging technologies to create new solutions that expand market opportunities for the channel as a whole.