Excellence Awards 6 Winners, Finalists Show Innovation Up and Down IT Stack

WINNER

Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Its hard to say which is the cause and which is the effect, but Microsofts investments in development tools often move in step with developers shifting concerns. Basic needs of tool integration and performance are now quite broadly met, not only by Microsofts popularly priced tools but even by freely available open-source alternatives. Microsoft toolmakers attention now seems focused on reducing the cost of entering the traditionally high-priced territory of developer collaboration and management aids.

Corporate Partner Tom Miller of FoxHollow Technologies also judged this category and said Microsofts Visual Studio 2005 Team System—with its different editions aimed at architects, developers and testers—meets the diverse needs of a development organization. The product line is "flexible and adaptive to business changes," added Miller.

Early adopters of Visual Studio 2005 Team System, which shipped just in time to be eligible for this award, praised its productivity and ease of learning. "We parameterize our unit testing so we can test multiple paths through the code without rewriting our unit tests," said Laura VanNess Pierce, senior manager for global alliance marketing at Unisys, in Bellevue, Wash. "No Microsoft assistance was necessary to implement and use VSTS—it is well-documented."

FINALISTS

Komodo 3.5

As process tools such as Microsofts Visual Studio 2005 Team System apply one lever to developer productivity, the power of scripting languages and frameworks offers another. ActiveState Softwares Komodo 3.5 ranked high in the Excellence evaluation with multiplatform, multilanguage capabilities that let developers focus on what they want to do, not on how or where they do it.

Adobe Systems

Macromedia Studio 8

Letting developers meet rising user expectations for engaging content, without becoming bogged down in low-level platform differences, is a valuable goal—one thats effectively pursued by Macromedia Studio 8 from Adobe Systems. Allowing developers to concentrate on creation rather than construction, this full-spectrum tool suite also embraces emerging standards.

—Peter Coffee

Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

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