BT Enterprise in Northern Ireland secured a double win at the Cisco Ireland Partners Awards held virtually in March this year as they were awarded both Software Partner of the Year and Social Impact Partner of the Year.

The Software Partner of the Year Award, was given in recognition of their work with the Public Sector Shared Network (PSSN) Enterprise Agreement in helping to move the NI Civil Service to remote working after the CV19 pandemic struck.

With lockdown looming in March 2020, the NI Civil Service had less than six weeks in which to implement different working practices and enable a more agile approach to business. Click here to read more about the steps the NI Civil Service took to ensure thousands of civil servants could work safely from home and continue to provide vital services despite the challenges of the pandemic.

The Social Impact Partner of the Year Award was in recognition of BTs work to move the NI Adoption Service events online with Cisco Webex during the pandemic and thereby ensuring the crucially important annual adoption family finding event could continue to take place despite the impact of CV19.

Since the first and very successful virtual event, more than half of the children have been placed with a family – a phenomenal result as previous events typically place one in three children. Read more about the project’s success here.

Paul Murnaghan, NI Regional Director, BT said: "I am extraordinarily proud of these projects and what they helped to achieve under extraordinary circumstances. They are both brilliant examples of what happens when we work with a very long-standing and trusted partner such as Cisco.

"Partnership working is critical… For decades we have worked together to innovate and to quickly and effectively bring ideas into the real world and therefore I am delighted these projects have been recognised in this way. We look forward to continuing to work with Cisco and our customers across the Public Sector to develop on our established partnership."

Tom Long, Head of Enterprise, Public Sector and Partnerships: “Cisco’s purpose is to provide an inclusive future for all. When we defined this purpose for our company little did we know about the impact the Covid-19 pandemic would have on society.

"During our recent Cisco Partner Awards, I was absolutely delighted to recognise the strong partnership that we enjoy with BT by announcing that BT had won both our Software Partner of the Year award and our Social Impact Excellence award.

"A common thread in both these awards is how BT used Cisco technology to ensure critical services to the citizens of Northern Ireland continued despite the unexpected disruption caused by Covid-19.”