We’re honored to announce that AIS’ own Media Center app won an Appy award for “Coolest App” at the SharePoint MVP Summit 2013. Media Center is a SharePoint app that allows you to integrate your Windows Azure Media Services (WAMS) assets in SharePoint. And we agree that it’s pretty darn cool.

You can download the award-winning Media Center app for free from the Office store.

And here’s a brief video demo of the app’s capabilities:

Congratulations and special thanks to AIS team members Jason McNutt, Harin Sandhoo, and Sam Larko for their contributions to Media Center!

For the second year in a row, AIS is proud to announce our ranking on the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies. We’ve grown 47% over the past three years and hired 80 new employees in our quest to best serve our clients. We’re honored to be ranked shoulder-to-shoulder with other great companies and entrepreneurs.

As always, though, we’re looking forward. Just this week, AIS attained our fourth AND fifth gold competencies in the Microsoft partner program, in the areas of Business Intelligence and Application Integration.

This achievement is an important benchmark in the competitive world of Microsoft technology partners. Each gold competency requires five customer references, numerous developer exams and other objectives. Joining our other areas of competencies — Software Development, Web Development, Portals and Collaboration (and the sub-category of Cloud Accelerate) — BI and Application Integration give AIS a well-rounded portfolio of expertise and opens new opportunities in the partner channel, including advisory councils and boards within Microsoft.

According to AIS President Tom O’Connell, “This is a testament to the depth and breadth of our experiences.  Even though Microsoft dramatically expanded the type and number of certifications and client references, we have quickly reached five gold competencies with our personnel and projects.  We applaud Microsoft setting a higher bar so that we can differentiate ourselves.”

Congratulations to the entire AIS team and everyone who helped make these achievements and recognition possible!

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2012 in Toronto last week, 20 regional Microsoft partners were honored at the Microsoft WPC 2012 Awards. Honorees were selected from more than 200 organizations across the East Region, and AIS was recognized as the 2012 East Region Azure Circle Partner of the Year for our innovative cloud applications at Pandora Jewelry, Bondi Publishing and PSI International. AIS architected, designed and developed solutions that leveraged Azure as a key part of the systems.

AIS was also recognized as the 2012 Cloud Practice Partner of the Year for the Mid-Atlantic district based on the projects we’ve delivered, as well as our ability to support the Microsoft field account teams as they work to educate their customers on the features and value Azure provides.

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