LONDON, UK: - 1st June - Europe’s leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services Computacenter announced today that it is the recipient of Cisco Partner Summit global awards for Cloud Partner of the Year, Architectural Excellence: Data Center Awards and Commercial Partner of the Year (Northern EMEAR). Cisco unveiled the winners at its annual channel partner conference on April 17 in San Diego, California.

Cisco Partner Summit global awards are designed to recognise exemplary channel partners who demonstrate best-in-class business practices and serve as a model to the industry. Areas of consideration include innovative practices, application successes, unique programs, problem solving and sales approaches. All winners are selected by a group of Cisco Worldwide Channels and regional executives.

"Cisco is privileged to work with some of the best channel partners around the world, and it is my honor to recognise Computacenter as a Cisco Partner Summit global award recipient," said Edison Peres, senior vice president, Worldwide Channels at Cisco. “The awards presented to Computacenter recognise its outstanding achievement as a Cisco channel partner in 2011.”

“We are thrilled to be recognised in these categories and look forward to continuing to provide Cisco solutions in the years to come,” says Rob MacAlister, Cisco Vendor Alliances Director, Computacenter. “We have been a Cisco partner for over 16 years and it is rewarding to be recognised for all of our hard work in this area. Cisco technology forms the infrastructure backbone of many organisations today and without it, many businesses would simply grind to a halt.”

Computacenter won the Cloud Partner of the Year Award for its work in cloud services, which includes Cisco’s Networking, Datacenter and Security technologies. The Architectural Excellence in DataCentre award recognises the work Computacenter has performed in delivering a number of Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System) solutions in the public sector, as well as carrying out ‘boot camps’ which help customers across the public and private sectors to understand the value of Cisco UCS.

Computacenter previously won Cisco Enterprise Partner of the Year in 2009, 2010 and 2011 and uses Cisco technology in many customer deployments, including the prestigious Harvey Nichols department store, which is using IP telephony to reduce costs and deliver superb customer service, as well as South Wales Fire and Rescue, which is using Cisco wireless broadband to improve connectivity and communications across more than 40 fire stations. Computacenter has also used Cisco Technologies to create the only Tier IV Uptime Institute certified datacenter in the UK.

“Cisco technology is both extremely robust and very versatile,” continues MacAlister. “Together, we bring superior technology and service excellence to create solutions which help organisations enhance productivity, stay in touch and be more competitive. At Computacenter, we are delighted to help customers to improve their organisations via IP telephony and wireless communications, optimised datacenters, improved security, cloud computing or superior bandwidth utilisation and application delivery through Cisco technology and look forward to many years of productive collaboration in the future.”

Cisco Partner Summit awards are presented at three levels: global, geo, and theater. Cisco Partner Summit global awards reflect the top-performing channel partners within a specific technology market across several geographic regions.