Fifth Annual eWEEK Excellence Awards

Its not just high-tech power that makes the honorees in the Fifth annual Excellence Awards program worthy of praise. Its the dedicated effort of IT vendors to meet enterprise demands that increasingly fail to fit traditional product categories. Our storage standouts, for example, are also security products; our network tool selections include wireless elements; our winning development aids are also collaboration products.

The winners and finalists announced below and in the following pages are the result of more than five months of work. In November, eWEEK called for nomination of enterprise-class products that had been announced in 2004 and that would be available by the end of March 2005. (An entry fee of $150 per vendor entering products was charged, with proceeds after program expenses going to a nonprofit agency.) When the entry deadline had passed, teams comprising eWEEK Labs analysts and members of the eWEEK Corporate Partner reader advisory board began evaluating the entries, looking specifically for products innovation in a given technology category combined with potential to address emerging enterprise needs.

In this special report, we put this years winners and finalists into context, while Technology Editor Peter Coffee looks for lessons learned from the post-award sagas of some early Excellence winners. Finally, eWEEK Labs Executive Editor Debra Donston writes about some other technology winners—the recipients of proceeds from this years program, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Category Product Vendor Analytics & Reporting Composite Information Server 3.0 Composite Software Inc.  Cognos Enterprise Planning 7.2 Cognos Inc. PowerExchange 5.2.1 Informatica Corp. Application Development Sun Java Studio Enterprise 7 Sun Microsystems Inc.  ER/Studio 6.6 Embarcadero Technologies Inc. SourceForge Enterprise Edition 4.1 VA Software Inc. Business Integration Systems NXJ 10.5 Unify Corp.  AmberPoint 4.0 AmberPoint Inc. FuegoBPM 5.5 Fuego Inc. Business Relationship Management Epiphany Interaction Advisor E6 Epiphany Inc.  eGain Service 7 eGain Communications Corp. Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition Winter 05 Salesforce.com Inc.

Desktop & Mobile Hardware ThinkPad X40 IBM  HP iPaq h6315 Pocket PC Hewlett-Packard Co. BlackBerry Wireless Solution 7100t Research In Motion Ltd. e-Business Foundations Solaris 10 Sun Microsystems Inc.  DB2 Universal Database 8.2 IBM Open Enterprise Server Novell Inc. E-Mail Management & Security Mailstream Content Manager 1.0 Sendmail Inc.  C-Series Messaging Gateway appliances IronPort Systems Inc. Voltage SecureMail 1.5 with Voltage IBE Gateway Voltage Security Inc. Enterprise Collaboration HiPath OpenScape 2.0 Siemens Communications Inc.  Office Live Communications Server 2005 Microsoft Corp. Netspoke Conferencing Netspoke Inc. Enterprise Storage Hardware DataFort 2.0 Decru Inc.  Isilon IQ 1440 and 2250 Isilon Systems Inc. OnStor NAS Gateway with Version 1.2 software OnStor Inc. Enterprise Storage Software SANscreen 2.8 Onaro Inc.  EMC ControlCenter 5.2 EMC Corp. Global Storage Manager 4 Storage Technology Corp. IT Quality Assurance Tools Mercury Business Process Testing 8.2 Mercury Interactive Inc.  Airespace Wireless Location Services 1.0 Airespace Inc. Agitator and Dashboard 2.0 Agitar Software Inc. Productivity Applications Agilix GoBinder 2005 Agilix Labs Inc.  Stylus Studio 6 DataDirect Technologies Inc. Novell Linux Desktop 9 Novell Inc. Server Hardware Azul Appliance Azul Systems Inc.  GridServer Virtual Enterprise Edition 4.0 DataSynapse Inc. Netezza Performance Server 8025 Netezza Corp.

Networking & Management Tools AirMagnet Enterprise 5.0 AirMagnet Inc.  Route Explorer/EIGRP Edition 3.0 Packet Design Inc. Visual UpTime Select 1.1 Visual Networks Inc. Networking Infrastructure TeraScale E300 Force10 Networks Inc.  Aruba 6000 grid controller Aruba Wireless Networks E/X Application Front End 3670 Redline Networks Inc.

System & Application Management VMware ESX Server 2.5 VMware Inc. AppManager Suite 6.0 NetIQ Corp. Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 Citrix Systems Inc. Authentication & User Management RSA Federated Identity Manager RSA Security Inc.  COREid 7.0 Oblix Inc. Sun Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition 2004Q2 Sun Microsystems Inc. Network Data-stream Protection Adaptive Security Platform 1.0 Vernier Networks Inc. Mazu Profiler 5.0 Mazu Networks Inc. Teros 200 5.0 Teros Inc. Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation Hercules 3.5 Citadel Security Software Inc.  Integrity 5.0 Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. McAfee Foundstone Enterprise 4.0 McAfee Inc.