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For Concord, ON-based Omnivex, winning Microsoft Canada’s 2010 Blue Sky Award was both a long time coming, and a long-term victory.
Omnivex, which produces interactive solutions for digital signage, took home the third-annual award for ISV innovation from the software giant for its new Moxie product. Doug Bannister, CEO of Omnivex, said that although Moxie itself launched last year, it dates back to a decision after Microsoft’s 2003 Professional Developers Conference to bet the company on the Microsoft stack. The decision was influenced by the biggest news of the event, the discussion of Longhorn, with its three main pillars of Avalon (which became WPF), Indigo (which became WCF) and the WinFS file system. The combination of graphics, communications and storage made a lot of sense for a company with core competencies in storing and communication information graphically.
“This is a vindication of the direction we took back then to bet the company on Microsoft,” Bannister said. “It’s paid off in spades and this is the crowning achievement.”
Omnivex is not exactly a stranger to Microsoft and its channel partners, having built its own channel from a base of Microsoft partners. And even those who don’t have an interest in digital signage may find the company’s solutions familiar. Omnivex has been Microsoft’s go-to partner for digital signage solutions at its corporate events for some time now, evolving from static screens of information to more dynamic displays of event-related social networking and interactive presentation of session schedules.
The win for the digital signage vendor was opened up by a change in focus for this year’s Blue Sky Awards. Whereas for the first two years of the award’s existence, it was intended expressly for start-ups, for this year, the company decided to open the competition to long-standing companies, provided they bring something new to the plate.
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