Fifth Annual Excellence Awards: The Finalists

The finalists in this years eWEEK Excellence Awards reflect a mix of big and small vendors and old-guard and upstart products, as well as some interesting technology trends.

We started accepting entries for our fifth annual program in November. The program was open to any enterprise product or service that had been announced in 2004 and that would be available before March 31, 2005.

The initial categorization of entries was performed by eWEEK Labs, and we determined a need this year to expand the number of categories weve used in the past. Regulatory mandates, the need for a broader application of security technologies and a more integrated business environment are just some of the forces that have combined to create more stringent and more multidisciplinary technology demands.

In the five years weve been running the Excellence Awards program, weve been impressed with the field of entered candidates. This year, however, the Excellence Awards judges—eWEEK analysts and members of the eWEEK Corporate Partner Advisory Board—found the process of determining finalists especially challenging.

"More than ever before, the Excellence field this year showed that IT vendors are trying to deliver what enterprise professionals need, not just following the least-resistance path of technology progress," said Peter Coffee, eWEEK technology editor.

For more information on all the finalists and to see what product won in each category, check out the April 11 issue.

Executive Editor Debra Donston can be reached at debra_donston@ziffdavis.com.