Industry Recognitions and Awards

Microsoft Bulgaria Ltd partner recognised at global partner event for excellence
in product and service innovation, customer service and business growth strategy

SOFIA, BULGARIA — 28 June 2010 — Recognising excellence in the partner network in Central and Eastern Europe, Microsoft today announced that Telerik, a leading vendor of development, automated testing, and team productivity tools, as well as UI components and content management solutions for Microsoft .NET, was recognized as a winner of the 2010 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. The awards honour Microsoft Registered Partners, Microsoft Certified Partners and Microsoft Gold Certified Partners that have delivered exemplary solutions for their customers during the past year.  Telerik was selected based on its Sitefinity content management system (CMS).

Award winners were chosen from the partner network in the region and will be recognised at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010, the company’s premier annual event for industry partners, held between 11 and 15 July in Washington D.C. The award winners were selected by Microsoft from a group of nominations based on their dedicated use of Microsoft technologies to provide solutions for their customers’ needs.

"To be selected by Microsoft for this prestigious honor clearly demonstrates Telerik's leadership role in the software market," said Vassil Terziev, Telerik CEO. "We are thrilled that Telerik has been recognized as a Microsoft Partner of the Year for our Sitefinity CMS product, as it underscores our commitment to providing outstanding innovation and value to our customers.”

Telerik’s Sitefinity CMS, based on market-proven ASP.NET development patterns, is a comprehensive development tool enabling rapid creation and deployment of richly interactive web pages. The product’s unique architecture, which incorporates Master Pages, templates, standard and user controls, themes and CSS, also allows seamless integration of legacy applications and third-party widgets to deliver unparalleled functionality.

“This year, nearly 300 of our CEE partners entered the competition for the opportunity to win a Partner of the Year Award, showcasing an impressive range of offerings they had pioneered in their markets.  We are delighted to recognise the partners whose entries demonstrated how they had gone the extra mile to offer something truly innovative and valuable to their customers,” said Ognian Kiriakov, General Manager, Microsoft Bulgaria Ltd. “Our partners make a vital contribution to the local business ecosystem, and according to a recent report from IDC, for every $1 USD Microsoft made in CEE in 2009, partner organizations made more than $10.44 USD.  At the Worldwide Partner Conference this year, we celebrate their contribution to CEE and recognise their success.”

Microsoft’s dynamic ecosystem, with over 250,000 partners in EMEA, accounts for as much as two-thirds of the IT industry in this region.  The Worldwide Partner Conference is designed to showcase best practice examples, connect partners to local executives and, critically, help them develop compelling solutions for customers using new technologies such as Windows 7, helping fuel short-term recovery and long-term growth.

IDC’s report at the economic impact of Microsoft’s technology in CEE, found that software drives activity in the services and distribution sectors as well as in IT-using organizations, which means that while spending on packaged software was only 14% of total IT spending in 2009, 41% of IT employment was software-related. Companies in the Microsoft ecosystem employ 211,000 people and IT using organizations employ another 392,000 IT professionals who work with Microsoft software or the products and services based on it. Together, these employees will account for 50% of IT-related employment in 2009 and 53% of IT-related taxes in the region.

The 2010 Microsoft Central and Eastern European awards recognise innovation and business value in 13 categories, and winners represent the top performers of the region’s IT industry.

About Telerik
Telerik empowers its customers to create compelling app experiences across any screen. Our end-to-end platform uniquely combines industry-leading UI tools with cloud services to simplify the entire app development lifecycle. Telerik tools and services can be adopted individually or as a platform and seamlessly integrated with other popular developer solutions. More than 130,000 customers from 40,000 organizations in 94 countries depend on Telerik products, including more than 450 of the Fortune 500®, academic institutions, governments and non-profits. For additional information about Telerik, please visit telerik.com or follow @telerik on Twitter.

About the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference provides Microsoft’s partner community with access to key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and information regarding specific customer solutions designed to help partners succeed in the marketplace.

Along with informative learning opportunities covering sales, marketing, services and technology, the Worldwide Partner Conference is an ideal setting for partners to garner valuable knowledge from their peers and from Microsoft. More information can be found at https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/wpc and on the Partner Program home page at https://partner.microsoft.com.

News and new digital content will be posted continually throughout the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. For the latest content, please visit the event newsroom at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/wwpc/.
For the latest on the Central and Eastern Europe partners and news: http://www.microsoft.com/emea/presscentre/microsoftinceevpr/WPC.aspx.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential.

For all news in EMEA, please visit https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/.

###

Press Contacts:

Erica Burns
Telerik, Inc.
Tel: 888.365.2779 #154
Erica.Burns@telerik.com