This week Microsoft named my employer, Fiserv, as winner of the Global ISV Line of Business Partner of the Year for 2008. According to Microsoft's press release, the awards "honor Microsoft Registered, Microsoft Certified and Microsoft Gold Certified partners that delivered exemplary solutions for their customers during the past year."

Allison L. Watson, corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft said, "The Partner of the Year Awards recognize the incredible innovation and value that Microsoft partners are delivering to our customers. The winners and finalists [...] have helped raise the standard for delivery of customer solutions and support. It is a privilege to recognize their work in designing and deploying exemplary customer solutions built on Microsoft technologies."

Fiserv's press release observes that our company is the only financial services partner to win this award. President and CEO, Jeffrey Yabuki, stated "We are honored to have been chosen by Microsoft as the first financial services partner to receive this global award. t is our mission to deliver differentiated technology solutions which help our clients achieve best-in-class results. We will continue to find innovative ways to extend our partnership with Microsoft to deliver value to Fiserv's clients today, and into the future."

Examples cited of these solutions led off with "Fiserv's next generation of the Voyager online banking product from Corillian, [which] leverages Web 2.0 features, including Microsoft .NET 3.5 ASP.NET, and enables banks to offer a differentiated and improved user experience to grow their online customer base and improve customer satisfaction." In case you lost your scorecard, Corillian was acquired by CheckFree in June 2007, and they, in turn, were acquired by Fiserv in December 2007.

Thanks to everyone at Fiserv and Microsoft who helped make this award possible!

Winners and finalists will be honored at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, July 7 - 10, 2008. (Houston in July?) The guest speaker at the conference is 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, founder of Garmeen Bank, banker to the poor.