Excuse me if I seem a little bit proud at the moment. I am.

Red Level has been named as Microsoft USB Champions Club Heartland Cloud Partner of the Year for 2016.

Not for the first time, or the second, but for the third year running. In 2014, Red Level was named Partner of the Year and for the past two consecutive years, Cloud Partner of the Year. A true “hat trick”.

What does that mean, you ask? Well, if you’re not in our line of work, that title might not mean a lot to you, but from where we stand it means a lot. In essence, it means that our company has been selected for outstanding performance when it comes to, in the Microsoft’s words, “arming the small business community with the right technology and services they need to be successful.”

In practical terms, that means helping companies to modernize, drive efficiency, cut costs and achieve competitive advantage. It means helping them to change not only the technology they use, but the way they think about technology – helping them to adopt new practices and approaches that strengthen their companies, increase stability, improve security and build their bottom lines. It means that time and again, we’ve succeeded in doing what we set out to do every day: Help our clients to make the most of their technology investments, and achieve the success they’re striving for.

Receiving this recognition means that we’ve managed to outperform our regional competitors – some of whom are larger, some of whom have been in business longer. We’ve met our competition head on, and more than held our own – we’ve won, and for three years running.

So yes, I’m proud. Proud of our company. Proud of our people. Proud of their commitment to excellence, to continued learning, to outstanding client service, to their seemingly limitless capacity to perform effectively as a team. Most importantly, I’m proud of their willingness to not just do hard work, but to embrace it – to tackle challenges, develop effective solutions, and deliver their very best efforts. As Red Level’s CEO, I see these winning behaviors in action every day.

The Cloud Partner of the Year award is truly an honor: It stands as proof positive of Red Level’s emergence as a genuine leader within our field. I’d say that’s not bad for a company that started out as a few friends working on card tables in a garage only about a decade ago. Together, we’ve achieved a lot, and sometimes against difficult odds.

Yes, I’m proud – not of myself, but of this team. This is a group of incredibly talented, focused, dedicated professionals who think of “achievement” and “continuous improvement not as slogans, but as ways of life. It shows in the work they do, the relationships they build, and in the awards they win.

So, in closing: My congratulations, and my heartfelt gratitude, to every member of the Red Level team on a job well done.

Now let’s do what it takes to win again next year.