Windows & .NET Magazine
Network announced the winners of the Best of Show Awards for Tech Ed 2003 at a reception at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas. Michele Crockett, Windows & .NET Magazine editor, presented awards to Windows technology vendors in seven categories and announced an overall Best of Show winner. The field included more than 211 entries, and the judges evaluated products based on their strategic importance in the market, competitive advantage, and value to the customer.
“All of the products that were finalists for the Best of Show award were truly excellent,” said Michael Otey, senior technical editor for Windows & .NET Magazine. “It was difficult to make the final selections,” said David Chernicoff, senior contributing editor.
The Overall Best of Show winner was
NEC Solutions’ Express 5800/320Lb-R Server. “This product redefines the fault-tolerant product category,” said Chernicoff. “NEC Solutions has managed to deliver a serious fault-tolerant system at a significantly low price. This system runs two computers in parallel in a single blade in which both sets of processors are fed exactly the same information. If one side fails, the other takes over seamlessly. It does away with the need for hot-swappable devices.”
The winner of the security products category was
Protocom’s SecureLogin Password Management Suite. “Single sign-on is big issue for companies,” said Otey, “and Protocom’s product offers a comprehensive solution to this problem for multiple systems and directories, including Sun, LDAP, and mainframe and AS/400 systems.”
Altova’s xml spy 5 won the developer tools category. “This product does everything you would ever want to do with XML and then some,” said Otey. “The product offers tight integration with SQL Server, plus SOAP debugging. It’s an essential tool if you’re developing applications that use XML.”
HP’s OpenView Operations for Windows won in the management category. Otey said, “This product provides an excellent overall graphical view of your Windows environment. It has strong tie-in with HP’s other tools and it offers heterogeneous management tools for Windows, UNIX, Linux, and applications such as Exchange, Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server, and Oracle. It lets you secure server groups, it offers a view of the Active Directory (AD) topology, and it provides excellent, interactive monitoring of services.”
The winner in the messaging category was HyperSoft Information Systems’ OmniAnalyser. David Chernicoff said, “This product offers a very comprehensive view of your entire email infrastructure and how messages progress through it. You can drill down on messages, find details about message content, and see that information in either realtime or report-based views.”
The winner in the mobility product category was Synchrologic’s Mobile Suite, which lets administrators deliver access to applications, email, and network content through users’ mobile devices. “This product simplifies the administrator’s task in getting functionality to users with mobile devices. For example, it gives users the ability to preview email before downloading it to the device.”
The winner in the collaboration and productivity category was Citrix Systems’ MetaFrame Conferencing Manager. Chernicoff said, “This product delivers the ability to share applications in a group collaborative setting on any ICA-compliant device. It enables virtual conferencing across the Internet, white-boarding, application-sharing, and other tasks.”
The winner in the networking and infrastructure category was Unisys’ ES7000/500.Chernicoff said, “The Unisys system provides an entry-level buy-in point for companies that need an enterprise-level server and gives companies a growth path to support a huge number of users with the same box as the company’s needs change. You can run multiple OSs on the same hardware with this box, and it will scale to 32 processors.”
