VARBusiness Honors Technology Innovators

and VARs to nominate products and technologies they thought were deserving of recognition,technologies that were truly making a difference when it came to delivering solutions that work for their customers. We had hoped to receive a sizable number of nominations, but when the final tally rang in near 400,talk about being careful what you wish for,we knew there was pent-up demand for someone to recognize the efforts of those focused on developing leading-edge products. Those products undoubtedly will help add fuel to an industrywide recovery that finally seems to be gathering some momentum.

Given the volume of applications that poured in, the editors here at VARBusiness were faced with the monumental task of scouring through all the paperwork to trim down the list to a manageable group of qualified candidates that would then be sent to our solution-provider judges. In doing so, our technology team, led by veteran editor David Strom, went through each entry looking for engineering marvels that could help our readers develop high-margin solutions and products that stood head and shoulders above their rivals' and peers'. We weren't necessarily looking for which company had the fastest access speed in storage, but rather which company was exerting creative genius.

In each of our eight designated technology categories,infrastructure, Linux, non-Web services, peripherals, security, storage, Web services and wireless,a wide range of products that appealed to different market segments were nominated. For instance, in storage the candidates we sent off to the judges included backup software, high-end RAID arrays and storage-management software, just to name a few. Suffice to say, the judges had their work cut out for them.

More specifically, we asked the judges to examine the product applications (along with hands-on testing if they chose to do so) and score them based not only on technical innovation, but also whether they could fit in as part of an overall solution for customers. In essence, does the product or technology fit into a solution provider's portfolio? Yes, I know some people will argue that channel-readiness can be an unfair indicator, and they may even point out that Apple's Newton was wildly innovative, though not viewed as a success from a channel perspective. Good point, but times have changed. Today, vendors realize that customers don't buy technology for technology's sake anymore. What's more, VARs have limited investment dollars. Thus, vendors' breakthroughs must be more channel-ready than ever before.

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So the judges went to work, and we asked a lot of them,especially since they did this for us for free. (For a complete listing of the judges, which included a diverse cross section of the channel, please go to VARBusiness.com; you'll find they hail from Allyance Communications, Dimension Data, IBM Global Services, Incremax, OpenDemand, SBI and other companies.) Their selections featured some exciting, new technologies with names you might not be entirely familiar with. For instance, the highest score in the Linux category went to EmergeCore Networks' IT in a Box, while Fortinet's FortiGate Antivirus Firewall was rated the best security product. Acer's TravelMate 250 notebook took top honors in the wireless category, and Sanrad's iSCSI V-Switch nailed down the competitive storage category, which also featured EMC and Dantz as finalists. NetIQ WebTrends Reporting Center, another up-and-comer, took first place for Web services.

It is interesting to note that many of the products listed above were competing against offerings from some of today's giants. And, yes, some of the industry's big guns were also honored at our awards ceremony. For instance, HP's Digital Projector MP3130 was voted the most innovative peripheral, while Novell's ZENworks 6 took top honors in enterprise software. The judges also rated Citrix's MetaFrame as tops in the infrastructure category.

We honored all the finalists and winners, along with the overall winner ZENworks and Editor's Choice PGP Universal, at an awards ceremony during the XChange Tech Innovators conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Oct. 27.

What innovative products and solutions have you seen lately? Let me know at [email protected].