Congratulations to Certus - Thank you to everyone who Voted

Back in August I asked for your vote in The UKOUG Partner Awards. I always say how important these are because they are voted for by end users.

It is a hard process for me, I am not allowed to do anything for PYA by UKOUG because I am a partner and there has to be a total separation. Most people understand that but my boss rang me 3 times on the day asking if we had won something and I just didn't know! Even during rehearsal in the afternoon they wouldn't let me near the boxes of trophies in case I saw anything.

photo from ukoug

Linda Barker, UKOUG President was unable to be at the event due to ill health and that meant I was asked to step in and host the night, but even then I wasn't allowed to hand out the prizes; again total separation.

I say all this because I know most people understand but I want to make it clear if anything being UKOUG counts against me.

Certus submitted in 6 categories this year, simply because we thought we had a story to share in each of them. We were then shortlisted for 5 which was a shock as the submissions this year were up 25% with some really strong competition. All of the management team in Certus asked people to vote,  through our customer relationships, and through linkedin to the wider community. If you read ANY of the Linkedin posts you will have read the passion for what we do; that is Certus, and why people want to work with us.

On the evening Richard Atkins arrived early, which on its own was impressive. Shortly before OOW, Richard moved into a new flat then flew out to San Francisco and then onto Australia where we have our APAC offices. He arrived back at 4pm on Thursday, rushed to a shop to buy a tux, rushed home and couldn't find any shoes! Hence he arrived at the Cafe de Paris looking reasonably smart, if not tired but with brown shoes. A fact the comedian, Chris Hunter (who was excellent)  mentioned several times. However when most people felt tired after midnight Richard was just waking up, jet lag has its advantages.

Richard was joined by Maria our Marketing Executive, and Charlene who runs our HR. I was sat on a different table.

photo from ukoug

Certus wanted most the Cloud Applications Award. In 2013, in the very early days of Certus, this was the Fusion Award and they won Silver. In 2014 and 2015 they had won the Gold Award. The company has grown, and now has 26 Cloud Customers (not including Australia which is also growing) and very proud of everything they have achieved.

The evening started well, we won Gold for a new category of Digital Transformation, helped by ONS who talked in a video about Digital Transformation in Government and how we are helping them achieve it, and England Rugby who talked about their Digital Transformation in Sport at Oracle Open World.

Then we won Gold for Middleware, this was a shock. We have been very, very open about our PaaS4SaaS work, it will be crucial for SaaS customers, especially those moving from EBS with many customisations. I did feel a little guilty, PaaS is one of the current buzz words and there are other partners doing amazing things with traditional middleware, but then we are sharing our findings as we go along and hopefully these help other end users. Last year we won bronze for this in the emerging technology category.

Interestingly Peter Care from FXLoader who was co-author to me in the latest Oracle Scene won Gold for ISV Innovative Service Partner with his APEX PaaS4SaaS application. People are really interested in what can be done in this area.

With two Golds under our belt it was really nerve wracking when it came to the Could Applications Category, this really was the big one for us. I so wanted to get on stage with Richard to collect it but as UKOUG I couldn't.

Mark Sweeny our CEO was at home following us with WhatsApp (no phone reception in the venue), but Tim Warner our COO is cleverer and he was following on Periscope, (thank you Mark from BPI on Demand). Even better the next morning we were all able to watch the ceremony and laugh again at Richard's shoes.

Three Golds was amazing and we still had 2 more nominations in the running. SME and Training. Again two important parts of what we do. I love working with SME customers the difference you can make is really powerful and quite fast, and Certus started by training and that was the first thing I did when I joined them. We won bronze in both these categories which we are really pleased with.

I had arrived at the venue at 4pm for a rehearsal in my UKOUG role. I had a small suitcase with my dress, makeup etc as travelling on the tube in black tie is fine for a man, but not a woman in broad daylight. This turned out to be a great thing as it meant I was able to carry our haul away no problem, and then deliver them to our office in Guildford the next day.

Mark and Tim were so happy, and we all watched the awards, laughed at Richard (again) and then cleaned the new and old awards. Mark joked abut the cost of cabinets but it was just how pleased he was. Mark and Tim started Certus when they were first movers on Fusion (Cloud Apps). The disruption in the partner market meant there was no niche partner willing to concentrate on just this. They started really small and have built the business up, working with development all the way. The investment has been tremendous, everyone has to be in learn mode constantly and there are always challenges, what we strive on that, and have customers happy to tell you that.

So the UKOUG partner awards, voted for by customers, are really important to Certus, and on the evening I was really touched by all the genuine congratulations from our peers. Thank you everyone for voting for us.

Thank you to all the UKOUG staff for the great night and Congratulations to all the other winners.