Best of TechEd 2011 Award Winners: 2 SharePoint Products Awarded Honors

Two SharePoint products scored top-of-the-heap honors at Microsoft TechEd 2011, Windows IT Pro magazine editor Jason Bovberg announced today.(To see the full list of who won, visit Windows IT Pro.)

An impressive group of SharePoint vendors was nominated for the award, among them quite a few powerhouse names in the SharePoint universe. The task of judging for the team of Windows IT Pro editors was difficult because of the quality of the solutions and the fact that all of them are necessary in some way to SharePoint admins or SharePoint developers trying to make SharePoint work.

After much consideration, research, and yes, some arguing, the editors narrowed the winners down to three finalists in the SharePoint Administration product category and three finalists in SharePoint Development product category. From that pool, after interviews with the vendors and product demos, winners were chosen.

• In the SharePoint Administration product category, the winner is Colligo Networks Contributor Pro. 
• In the SharePoint Development product category, the winner is K2/SourceCode K2 blackpearl.

About Contributor Pro, one judge wrote: I like that Contributor Pro addresses the issue of the user’s experience of SharePoint and attempts to make that experience an easy and productive one by integrating it with Microsoft Outlook’s email interface. The savings in the Exchange Server area by not having to deal with users sending attachments is a nice benefit as well. And the emphasis on making users tag SharePoint documents through prompts helps to organize what can be an overwhelming amount of data, which then makes it searchable by others who need it.

About K2 blackpearl, one judge wrote: I like that K2 blackpearl offers 3 design environments where devs, admins, and power users can create SharePoint workflows, processes, and applications--one that's just the right interface for non-coding people, one for admins, and one that's got all the functionality devs require. The visual, easy-to-use design tools, wizards, and inline functions offer a variety of ways to create workflows and automate processes. It's a comprehensive solution that meets the needs of the three most important job groups that touch SharePoint.

To read more about the winners in the SharePoint product category, as well as in Virtualization, cloud, systems management, and more, see Windows IT Pro "Best of TechEd 2011 Award Winners."