I haven’t made too much noise on my blog about the fact that I joined bluLink Solutions at the 1st of March this year, and that’s been an oversight. I’m really enjoying my time with bluLink Solutions (blulinksolutions.com, @bluLinkTweets).

This is an opportunity for me to help drive business productivity improvements within business groups and departments within one of the most advanced IT infrastructures in the world.  It can be very challenging, but the people I work with and our clients (mostly internal Microsoft groups) are very smart and have great project requirements.

This week is the Microsoft Preferred Supplier Summit 2014, and it is being held at the MSFT Conference Center on Redmond Campus.  This is a great opportunity for Microsoft’s Preferred Suppliers to connect with top leadership in the Finance, Accounting, Procurement, and IT departments. We heard from some of the Top Brass today, including Mike Simms, Chief Procurement Officer (LinkedIn), and Jim DuBois, MSFT Chief Information Officer (@MSIT).  I can report that the innovation is going to continue and is accelerating. This is an exciting time to work as a vendor with Microsoft.

At the summit today they also announced and awarded the Microsoft Annual Supplier Awards.  I’m thrilled that bluLink Solutions was a Finalist in the Innovative Supplier of the Year category.  The folks here at bluLink have been doing an amazing job through the past year, and one of our projects, built to support critical business functionality in the Microsoft Consulting Services group, led to the nomination.

Congratulations to the winners!  Assembly/Edelman won the top award, Supplier of the Year, and arvato AG won the Innovative Supplier of the Year award, beating out bluLink Solutions.  Following the award, the CEO of arvato AG spoke, and it was pretty clear that their solution, powered by some of their 67,000 employees, was much larger in scope than the bluLink Solutions project (13 employees).    Was it more innovative?  The judges apparently thought so.  Congratulations to arvato AG and Assembly! 

The full of supplier award winners is here (http://www.thestreet.com/story/12716058/1/microsoft-recognizes-outstanding-contributions-by-suppliers.html)

Through the remainder of today and tomorrow, we will attend sessions covering changes and advancements in the relationship between Microsoft Procurement and Microsoft Suppliers.  I’m looking forward to it and at bluLink Solutions, we hope to be back as a Finalist next year, as well!

Categories: Microsoft Partners