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

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The eWEEK Excellence Awards program focuses on tasks rather than technologies. Were not identifying the word processor of the year or the desktop database of the year. Rather, were looking from the top to the bottom of the enterprise IT stack and asking where innovation is focused in any year at every tier.

That question gets asked at the foundation-in servers and storage and operating systems-and asked again all the way up through the user- and partner-facing tiers, such as those that manage a labor force or supply chain. The answers reveal the changing themes that drive each years new developments on many tiers at once.

In previous years, the pervasive themes of Excellence have included the explosion of wireless connectivity and the dramatic growth in security issues. This years recurring theme was the need to live up to mandates of stronger and more transparent enterprise governance, whether dictated by legislation or arising from informed stakeholders concerns.

The sixth annual Excellence Awards program was open to any enterprise technology product announced in 2005 and released before the end of the first quarter of 2006. The entries were judged by a team of technology experts-comprising eWEEK Labs analysts and members of the eWEEK Corporate Partner Advisory Board, senior IT professionals who represent eWEEK readers.

Were pleased to offer our readers this annual guide to Excellence, including the winners and finalists in 19 categories.

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

Analytics

& Reporting”> CATEGORY: ANALYTICS & REPORTING

WINNER

Cognos

Cognos 8 Business Intelligence 8.1.1

IT vendor response to corporate governance mandates drove innovation in many categories this year, but nowhere was this more apparent than in the entries for Analytics & Reporting. The category winner, Cognos 8 Business Intelligence 8.1.1, addressed enterprise interest in achieving improved governance without a cumbersome and costly proliferation of systems.

“Cognos has integrated its diverse product offering into a flexible Web services architecture,” said eWeek Corporate Partner judge Tom Miller, senior director of IT at FoxHollow Technologies, in Redwood City, Calif. “The use of a single metadata layer and query engine provides for a cohesive view of business information.”

With the deep-dyed awareness of compliance concerns that comes from FoxHollows work in medical device development and support, Miller has a sharply focused shopping list: “The need to aggregate, classify and report information in a timely manner has become critical,” he said in his comments during the final stages of evaluation. “These products must be business-flexible, scalable, secure and cost-effective.” The judges found Cognos entry a match for this high standard.

FINALISTS

Attenex

Attenex Patterns

Vast compilations of digital records create overwhelming discovery workloads during litigation-a burden that Attenex Patterns ably eases. Attenexs Patterns is “the best e-discovery tool that I have used,” said Stanley Gibson, partner at Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro, in Los Angeles, and a Patterns customer the judges interviewed for real-world perspective. “There is no other tool Im aware of,” Gibson said, with comparable aids for visualizing clusters of conceptually related documents.

Fujitsu Software

Interstage XWand 7

As business processes become ever more “born digital,” enterprise architects face both opportunity and challenge in achieving cross-process integration. Emerging standards such as Extensible Business Reporting Language offer leverage toward that end, and Fujitsu Softwares Interstage XWand 7 gives developers a capable platform for XBRL adoption.

-Peter Coffee

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

Application Development

CATEGORY: APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

WINNER

Microsoft

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

ActiveState Software

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

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

Business Integration Systems

CATEGORY: BUSINESS INTEGRATION SYSTEMS

WINNER

Bea Systems

AquaLogic Service Bus 2.1

BEA Systems has been a leader in the pure business integration space, but, until recently, the company has not been perceived as a strong presence in the emerging area of service-oriented architecture integration.

That changed, however, with the release last year of AquaLogic Service Bus 2.1, with which BEA takes a very impressive step forward in the world of SOAs.

The Excellence Awards judges in this category were greatly impressed with the extensive management capabilities that the BEA platform brings to the difficult task of deploying, tracking and creating the services that enterprises increasingly rely on to stay connected. Also, AquaLogic is impressively broad in its support of core Web services standards and Web application technologies.

AquaLogic Service Bus provides well-designed tools for managing all aspects of an SOA, and it doesnt hurt that it is based on BEAs excellent WebLogic application server-providing a very high level of scalability and enterprise-class performance.

FINALISTS

JBoss

Hibernate 3.1

When one thinks about the high-level world of object-oriented languages and relational mapping, open-source products dont often spring to mind.

That should change with JBoss Hibernate 3.1, which provides a powerful tool for enterprise-class database integration in J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition)-based environments. And, as with many successful core open-source server products, organizations already may be using Hibernate without knowing it, as it is integrated with several popular open-source server applications and portals.

Sonic Software

Sonic SOA Suite 6.1

Sonic is one of the most well-established and mature players in the Web services and SOA space, and Sonic SOA Suite 6.1 illustrates why. From a wide assortment of development tools for building complex services to a robust messaging platform to the core ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) system, this extremely comprehensive suite provides all the tools and applications needed to build an enterprise-class SOA.

-Jim Rapoza

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

Business Relationship Management

CATEGORY: BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

WINNER

Salesforce.com

Salesforce Winter 06

With the Winter 06 release of its namesake customer relationship management platform, Salesforce.com continues to raise the bar for hosted applications. Salesforce.com Winter 06 is the winner in this category as much for advancing Salesforce.com as a platform on which other applications can thrive as for the significant improvements in capability and usability it brings.

With AppExchange, Salesforce.com now provides a way for companies to find companion products and prebuilt customizations that create ready-made solutions to business problems associated with sales and customer support. AppExchange makes the process of testing and buying these complementary products and customizations much simpler than with off-the-shelf software, which can require considerable integration to achieve meaningful improvements with existing CRM systems.

In this release of Salesforce.com, custom development gets another boost through the addition of sandbox technology: Salesforce Sandbox allows companies to create customizations and to test and refine them, and it provides a way to train users before deploying these customizations en masse.

FINALISTS

Centive

Centive Compel Fall 2005

Incentive compensation management systems are notoriously complex and time-consuming to implement. But as a hosted service, and by providing a set of easy-to-learn tools for building plans, Centive Compel eliminates much of the deployment time usually associated with these products. Centive Compel doesnt take the complexity out of creating plans, but it does speed the process of building, testing and managing them, with minimal training.

Exact Software

Exact e-Synergy 360

Exact e-Synergy 360 is an easy-to-customize Web-based application that delivers sales, human resources and document management applications on top of a well-designed workflow engine. E-Synergys flexibility makes it a good choice for companies that want a unified application for managing customer, partner and employee relationships, and these functions hold up well when compared with dedicated systems.

-Michael Caton

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

Desktop

& Mobile Hardware”> CATEGORY: DESKTOP & MOBILE HARDWARE

WINNER

Lenovo

ThinkPad Z60t

Users are looking for hardware that makes it easier for them to do their jobs, whether in the office or on the road. The winner in the Desktop & Mobile Hardware category, Lenovos ThinkPad Z60t laptop, does all of that and more.

One thing that impressed the Excellence Awards judges in this category was that the ThinkPad Z60t was the first laptop on the market to integrate high-speed EvDO (Evolution Data Optimized). In fact, when eWeek Labs reviewed the ThinkPad Z60t last year, wed never seen a laptop with an integrated EvDO wireless broadband modem; today, almost every business-targeted laptop offers a wireless broadband option.

“When it comes to innovation, Lenovo gets it, hands down,” said Kevin Wilson, an eWeek Corporate Partner who worked with eWeek Labs in judging the entries in this category. Wilson is a manager of desktops and workstation hardware at Duke Energy, in Charlotte, N.C.

The ThinkPad Z60t also impressed judges with its full-size keyboard, 14-inch widescreen and Lenovos ThinkVantage tools.

FINALISTS

Gateway

M280

Gateways M280 was a finalist in this category for the way in which it eliminates the trade-offs usually associated with the tablet PC platform. “The corporate person who lives and works with a laptop day in and day out has previously not been able to consider a convertible tablet PC because some sort of trade-off would be involved related to screen size and power,” said Duke Energys Wilson. “With the Gateway M280 convertible, this large class of corporate clients does not have to accept such trade-offs.”

Research in Motion

BlackBerry 8700c

What corporate user doesnt rely on a Research In Motion BlackBerry device? Users can increase their productivity with the BlackBerry 8700c due to its improved application support and the addition of attachment viewing-two key features for mobile workers. The Excellence Awards judges also liked that the BlackBerry 8700c offers users a bright color screen and a smaller footprint than previous BlackBerry units. RIM also has optimized the device to perform faster and more responsively.

-Anne Chen

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

E

-Business Foundations”> CATEGORY: E-BUSINESS FOUNDATIONS

WINNER

Tealeaf Technology

RealiTea 4.5

This single category represents the central mandate of these awards: In any given year, we make a vital statement by deeming one class of product-let alone a single product in that class-a foundation for elevating infrastructure performance and return on investment to their next levels. This year, we focus on the need to achieve greater consistency of results in every customers online experience, and we name TeaLeaf Technologys RealiTea 4.5 as a means to that end. RealiTea monitors in real time how online customers are navigating a site and can provide immediate alerts if something goes wrong.

Indeed, the cost of e-customer dissatisfaction is devastating. A November 2005 study commissioned by TeaLeaf found that “customers who encounter problems in completing an online transaction are likely, one out of three, to go elsewhere rather than try again-and almost nine out of 10 report encountering such problems.”

Too often, though, we rely on a systems own opinion of whether its working instead of enabling independent measurement-such as that provided by RealiTea-of whats actually going on. IT managers comments to eWeek Labs have consistently noted that help desk calls or other employee feedback are often their first notice of problems on even a well-instrumented network.

We urge eWeek readers to make the coming year one of far better feedback on whats really happening, not merely on whether the system is up or down.

FINALISTS

Hummingbird

Hummingbird Enterprise 2005

The digital assets of the enterprise serve both internal knowledge needs and outward communication goals, requiring disciplined management. Hummingbirds Enterprise 2005 suite enables the unified storage and creative, insightful use of unstructured information, combining freedom to collaborate with rigor in asset protection and process governance.

Microsoft

Windows Server 2003 R2

Windows Server 2003 R2 distinguishes itself with useful improvements to management and performance in core functions, such as file sharing and identity services. Noteworthy are improved interoperability with Unix variants and more cost-effective licensing of up to four virtual instances.

-Jason Brooks

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

E

-Mail Management & Security”> CATEGORY: E-MAIL MANAGEMENT & SECURITY

WINNER

Orchestria

Orchestria 4.0

Orchestria 4.0 provides an excellent set of tools for companies faced with ensuring that e-mail-, instant messaging- and Web-based communications meet regulatory requirements. Orchestria focuses on-and has developed expertise for-financial institutions, but, with Version 4.0, the company has built out its policy library to make the tool suitable for a broader range of industries. These prebuilt policies also mitigate one of the more significant problems facing message compliance tools-the time required to create and deploy policies.

The Excellence Awards judges in this category were impressed with how the Orchestria platform differs from many of the communications policy compliance tools in this space: Rather than relying on lexicon and keyword analysis for managing policies, Orchestria 4.0 allows compliance officers to create more complex rules that use a weighting algorithm to more accurately predict if a message violates a given policy, reducing the number of false-positive results. The judges also appreciated that Orchestrias architecture allows companies to actively police internal and external communications while providing real-time feedback to users when they send communications that violate policy, helping reinforce policy on a daily basis.

FINALISTS

EMC

EmailXtender 4.7

EMCs EmailXtender 4.7 stands out for its ability to efficiently archive e-mail and IM communications, increasing user productivity and making it easy for auditors to quickly find relevant messages.

EmailXtender has a comprehensive feature set that will help organizations not only with compliance but also with backup and recovery, as it can retrieve lost or deleted messages through real-time message capture.

Open-Xchange

Open-Xchange Server 5

Many e-mail server vendors concentrate on providing a good experience with Microsofts Outlook client-so much so that its no longer a differentiator. Open-Xchanges Open-Xchange Server 5s broader goals of providing a flexible collaboration platform that makes it easy for users to manage tasks and projects made it a finalist in our judging.

-Michael Caton

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

E

nterprise Collaboration”> CATEGORY: ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION

WINNER

Antepo

OPN System XT

Instant messaging platforms are rapidly evolving from consumer-oriented applications to broad presence management tools that can interoperate across network boundaries. One such application is the winner of the Enterprise Collaboration category, Antepos OPN System XT.

The Excellence Awards judges who evaluated the entries in this category were impressed by Antepos standards support-which includes both SIP/SIMPLE (Session Initiation Protocol/SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) and XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). This will allow companies to make the most of presence information and enable interoperability with other messaging systems, as well as with the America Online network, inside and outside the organization.

This interoperability allows OPN System XT to work in conjunction with IM systems such as Microsofts Live Communications Server and provides presence data in environments where users rely on Outlook and VOIP-based phones.

The product supports multiparty, persistent chat and team-based collaboration in applications that require input from many users. It also provides a way to maintain the knowledge those users share, such as technical support.

FINALISTS

Intuit

QuickBase for Corporations

Intuits QuickBase has gone from a simple spreadsheet replacement to a robust, enterprise-aware hosted database application-all without giving up ease of use. This edition of the product is available as a hosted service, but, because it provides support for corporate directories and centralized user management, security policies arent sacrificed.

Sant

The Sant Suite 7.2

Sants Sant Suite 7.2 helps companies break down their key selling points into discrete document pieces and to quickly and easily cherry-pick the most relevant pieces for a given selling situation. This greatly simplifies the time-consuming task of creating presentations and proposals while maintaining message continuity.

-Michael Caton

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

E

nterprise Storage Hardware”> CATEGORY: ENTERPRISE STORAGE HARDWARE

WINNER

Isilon Systems

Isilon IQ

Isilon Systems Isilon IQ storage appliances help IT managers deal with the overwhelming burden of reference data storage.

With companies gathering up digital data-in the forms of audio, video, pictures and documents-at exponentially increasing rates, managing storage is no easy chore. The Excellence Awards judges in this category therefore kept the ability to consolidate storage resources and management high on the list of key evaluation points.

Isilon IQs ability to cluster multiple performance and storage nodes gives it a level of flexibility not available in most NAS (network-attached storage) solutions today. The judges also liked the ease of use of Isilon IQ, which allows IT managers to add new nodes without disrupting user access to data. In addition, thanks to a shared global namespace, data can be moved across nodes transparently without forcing users to remap their network drives.

Indeed, Isilon IQ eliminates much of the complexity associated with managing multiple NAS units while providing the storage scalability most organizations need.

FINALISTS

3Pardata

InServ Storage Server with Dynamic Optimization

Another product designed to help IT managers with their storage consolidation needs is 3Pardatas InServ Storage Server with Dynamic Optimization, a highly scalable storage array that can provide multiple tiers of storage within a single system. InServ Storage Server with Dynamic Optimization also can migrate older and less important data to less expensive storage without disrupting applications.

Spectra Logic

Spectra T950

Spectra Logics Spectra T950 is the first library the Excellence Awards judges had seen with integrated AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)-256 capabilities. In light of all the embarrassing data thefts that have occurred during the last two years, we expect more library vendors will follow Spectra Logics lead. With its key-deletion capabilities, the Spectra T950 can quickly expire tape media without the need for costly physical destruction of the media. The library also supports multiple tape formats in a single enclosure.

-Henry Baltazar

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

E

nterprise Storage Software”> CATEGORY: ENTERPRISE STORAGE SOFTWARE

WINNER

Onaro

SANscreen Business Continuity 2

Disaster recovery and business continuity loomed large as the Excellence Awards judges evaluated the many entries that fell into this category. The winner, Onaros SANscreen Business Continuity 2 (since rebranded SANscreen Replication Assurance), helps IT managers ensure that the volumes they replicate from a primary data center to failover sites are consistent and ready for action in the event of a disaster.

The daunting complexity of disaster recovery and business continuity has made management tools like Onaros invaluable. SANscreen Business Continuity 2 lets IT managers quickly visualize their storage resources and locate potential flaws in their disaster recovery and business continuity processes. Because, in the end, the process of replicating large blocks of data over a WAN is useful only if an IT manager can guarantee that that data is consistent at the remote site.

SANscreen Business Continuity also allows IT managers to keep track of the storage consumption of replicated volumes, a capability that can be used to implement chargeback policies or to justify future storage hardware purchases.

FINALISTS

Symantec

Enterprise Vault 6.0

Compliance was another hot-button topic in this category. Symantecs Enterprise Vault, now in its sixth version, allows IT managers to archive e-mail and eliminate the all-too-common scourge of rogue .pst files. With compliance affecting just about every industry, e-mail archives like Enterprise Vault will surely grow in importance over the years.

XOsoft

Assured Recovery 3.72

XOsofts Assured Recovery 3.72 is another product that rose to the top of this category for its ability to aid in effective disaster recovery and business continuity-solutions for which all too often are designed for the high end. Assured Recovery 3.72, which validates applications and data at remote sites, stands out for its accessibility to small and midsize businesses. Assured Recovery 3.72 can protect Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Internet Information Services, as well as Oracle databases, and a future release is expected to work with third-party replication engines.

-Henry Baltazar

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

IT Quality Assurance Tools

CATEGORY: IT QUALITY ASSURANCE TOOLS

WINNER

Compuware

Vantage 9.8

Compuwares Vantage rose above the pack of IT Quality Assurance entries with its focus on todays newly volatile IT environment: the price thats being paid for the benefits that come from service-based interaction among diversely owned IT assets.

Vantage discovers application and server relationships and correlates these with reported service delivery problems. Its dashboards lead IT operators to the infrastructure changes that most often turn out to be the unintended triggers of service disruption.

Vantage 9.8 got its final nudge to Excellence honors from the enthusiastic praise of longtime user Matt Evanson at FBL Financial Group, in West Des Moines, Iowa. “We have utilized Compuwares Vantage product suite for close to 10 years now. We use it to provide our technical infrastructure and application service monitoring. It helps our company focus on the performance and availability of our application services to our end users,” said Evanson, enterprise monitoring solutions team leader, when contacted by the judges in this category for field-based perspective.

“[Compuware] focused on the end-user experience instead of just focusing on low-level technical monitoring,” Evanson added. He also reinforced the frequent observation of Excellence judges that enterprise buyers are looking for a partner, not just a product. “Compuware is very conscientious about looking for product improvement from its customers,” Evanson emphasized, saying that the company identifies intensive users and looks to them for input.

FINALISTS

Akimbi Systems

Akimbi Slingshot 2.0

Akimbi Systems Slingshot 2.0 offers technology that dramatically accelerates the setup and reconfiguration of testbed environments. With Junes announcement of Akimbi Slingshots Ready-for-Rational certification, the company is partnering with IBM to offer integrated, out-of-the-box capability for capturing and reproducing defects.

Netscout Systems

nGenius Performance Manager

“We wanted to move on from how much our network was being used to how it was being used,” said Andrew Brill, team lead and consultant specialist in the IT function of Kaiser Permanente, when contacted for comments on nGenius Performance Manager. “There is no better tool for network reporting,” Brill added.

-Henry Baltazar and Peter Coffee

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

Productivity Applications

CATEGORY: PRODUCTIVITY APPLICATIONS

WINNER

Sun Microsystems

StarOffice 8

In the category of Productivity Applications, the eWeek Excellence Awards judges were looking for products that do more than just copy Microsofts Office suite. Suns StarOffice 8 does just that, offering unique features and a multiplatform system that meets the OASIS ODF standard.

In terms of features, extensibility and compatibility, StarOffice really stands out. The judges particularly liked that the office suite supports the Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems-not to mention that it costs significantly less than Microsoft Office.

In fact, eWeek Labs Senior Analyst Jason Brooks said in his October 2005 review of StarOffice 8 that the Sun suite is Microsoft Offices toughest rival yet and stands up better than ever to Microsofts offering.

StarOffice 8s word processing (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress) and database (Base) functions are very capable, and the Sun suite has shown good compatibility with Microsofts offering-an important consideration in a world where Microsoft still has the lions share of the market.

StarOffices support for ODF (OpenDocument Format) is especially compelling since Microsoft has not announced it will support the standard in its forthcoming Office 2007 suite. ODF will allow for diversity among office suite applications without requiring format importers and exporters and the compatibility issues that often accompany them.

FINALISTS

NetworkStreaming

SupportDesk 8.2

NetworkStreamings solution offers an easy way for IT managers to provide help desk support. The SupportDesk 8.2 appliance gives support professionals remote control capabilities for taking care of troubled PCs. In this category, the Excellence Awards judges especially liked the fact that, once an IT manager logs out of a session, SupportDesk is completely uninstalled and leaves no footprint.

ThinkFree

ThinkFree Office Server Edition

The server-based office productivity suite from ThinkFree provides Microsoft Office-like capabilities over the network to end users PCs. Judges gave high marks to ThinkFree Office Server Edition for its potential to lower management costs. And, like the winner in this category, Suns StarOffice 8, ThinkFree can be deployed on a variety of major operating systems, including Linux, Windows and Suns Solaris.

-Anne Chen

• Analytics & Reporting
• Application Development
• Business Integration Systems
• Business Relationship Management
• Desktop & Mobile Hardware
• E-Business Foundations
• E-Mail Management & Security
• Enterprise Collaboration
• Enterprise Storage Hardware
• Enterprise Storage Software
• IT Quality Assurance Tools
• Productivity Applications
• Server Hardware
• Networking & Management Tools
• Networking Infrastructure
• System & Application Management
• Authentication & User Management
• Network Data-Stream Protection
• Vulnerability Assessment & Remediation

Server Hardware

CATEGORY: SERVER HARDWARE

WINNER

Fujitsu Computer Systems

PrimeQuest 480

With IT managers focused on getting as much processing power out of their hardware as they can while keeping management and power consumption costs down, Fujitsu Computer Systems PrimeQuest 480 is very appealing. The server impressed the Excellence Awards judges by tackling these issues in an innovative way.

The PrimeQuest 480 supports as many as 32 Intel Itanium 2 processors in a compact chassis that hosts up to 1TB of memory.

“Fujitsus PrimeQuest 480 is truly scalable and capable,” said Erich Berman, a Corporate Partner judge in this category and advanced technology consultant at Northwestern Mutual, in Milwaukee.

PrimeQuest 480s partitioning-which enables up to eight isolated partitions, with each running a separate operating system instance and software stack-really made the server stand out from the competition in this category. The judges also liked that the server offers multiple options for mirroring critical components to ensure continued operation in the event of hardware failures.

FINALISTS

Sun Microsystems

Sun Fire X4100 and X4200

The Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 servers were designed by Sun Microsystems founder, Andy Bechtolsheim, and theyre the first servers in Suns new xSeries x86 server line, code-named Galaxy. The judges liked that the dual-core-capable servers deliver reliably in compute-intensive environments and that they are well-suited for memory-intensive applications and workloads.

Tripp Lite

SmartOnline UPS systems

While theyre not servers themselves, Tripp Lites SmartOnline hot-swappable and high-power-density uninterruptible power supply systems ensure that data center servers stay up and running. Judge Berman said it best: “Interesting. A simple and practical solution.” With no tolerance for downtime, enterprises can rely on the SmartOnline UPS systems to ensure the availability of mission-critical equipment. The Excellence Awards judges in this category also liked that these UPS systems allow IT managers to have power completely replaced without disconnecting equipment.

-Anne Chen

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