Gateway Systems has announced a partnership with MCS, an award winning Microsoft solution partner based in the Cayman Islands.Both Gateway Systems and MCS are leading professional services companies offering Information Technology solutions to clients in offshore jurisdictions.Gateway said MCS won the Microsoft Partner of the Year for the Cayman Islands for the last two years and in both 2010 and 2011 won regional awards for work with Microsoft SharePoint and Business Productivity solutions, winning in a field of almost 3,000 entrants throughout the Latin America and Caribbean region.“Supported directly by Microsoft, MCS developed a regional program which enables Microsoft partners to collaborate on client projects and provide specific expertise where required through the regional Xcelerate team, a collection 140 plus Microsoft Business Productivity professionals,” Gateway said.“As the Xcelerate partner for Bermuda, Gateway is now able to offer its clients a broad range of Microsoft Business Productivity solutions.“The Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure includes a complete set of technologies including SharePoint, Lync, Office, Exchange, GP and CRM that help streamline the management and control of content, data, and processes across all areas of your business.“This helps simplify how people work together, makes processes and content management more efficient, and improves the quality of business insight while enabling IT to increase responsiveness and have a strategic impact on the business.“The end result is to amplify the impact of your people by delivering powerful experiences across the PC, phone, and browser for the way people work today — and the way they expect to work in the future.”As a result of this alliance several pre-packaged solutions are now available to the Bermuda market, and offer low-cost solutions to common business problems.For example, Gateway said, one package offers a complete view of clients, projects and or employees, bringing together all aspects of the entity; i.e. documents, e-mails and other data into a unified 360° view that allows business to analyse information quickly.These solutions leverage extranets, workflow, content management and scanning as well as business intelligence dash boarding and reporting to deliver tangible value and improve overall business effectiveness.Richard Collett, vice president of Financial Solutions at MCS commented on the new partnership: “We’re delighted to partner with Gateway in Bermuda to offer complimentary business productivity solutions to their clients.“We have seen great success with the partner-to-partner model in the Caribbean and this collaborative program, backed by Microsoft, has provided clients with best-of-breed services.”John Kyle, managing director of Gateway Systems added: “We saw the need to add resources that can scale as required especially in SharePoint development and this partnership gives us this ability to do this easily and cost effectively. Dealing with a proven entity ensures that learning curves are short and it goes without saying that solutions that work in Bermuda also have application in Cayman and of course vice versa.”