VARBusiness Names 2004 Technology Innovator Awards Winners

One widely held assumption about technological innovation is that large companies are too focused on sustaining their established businesses and products to do anything very creative, and that to find real cutting-edge technology the market must look to smaller, lesser-known vendors.

But this year at VARBusiness' second annual Tech Innovator Awards show, it was apparent that more than a few household names are still doing plenty of groundbreaking R&D. VARBusiness senior editor Alexander Wolfe and senior writer Carolyn April presented the awards along with editorial director Robert C. DeMarzo Monday night at the showcase reception of the final CMP XChange event of 2004.

"Innovation is the heart and soul of the IT community and of the solution-provider community, and with these awards we're trying to focus on the innovations that are making a difference today," DeMarzo said.

A host of large vendors accepted awards, including IBM, HP, Symantec, Computer Associates, Cisco, Sony and Novell. In fact, the venerable IBM, Novell, 3Com and Sony were the only companies to garner more than one mention.

VARBusiness recognized three companies -- one winner and two runners-up -- in nine different categories. The winners were chosen from an initial pool of more than 460 submissions by a panel that included VARBusiness editors and 11 solution providers who serve on the magazine's advisory board. The biggest change from last year's awards was the replacement of the wireless, Web services and non-Web services categories with mobility, client devices and broader groupings of applications and enterprise software.

One surprising thing about the results was that one of its most mature categories -- enterprise software -- was dominated by less prominent companies. Maximizer Software's Enterprise 8 CRM software platform won the group, followed by Fast Search & Transfer's FAST ESP information-retrieval solution and version 8 of Actuate's enterprise reporting platform.

"We've been at this since 1987, trying to meet customer demand for faster deployments and a need for lower expertise during implementation, and we've developed a platform that meets both criteria," said Will Anderson, product manager for Maximizer.

IBM showed off its innovative versatility by winning the applications category with its WebSphere Business Integration Server Express -- the SMB version of its Web integration platform -- and finishing as a finalist in client devices with its ThinkPad X40, an iteration of its popular notebook line that features a longer-lasting battery and smaller footprint than comparable models. The two awards combined to make Big Blue this year's Overall Technology Innovator (OTI).

"The surprising thing we've found about the enterprise and SMB is that their needs are the same, but the difference is the extent of their needs," said Chandra Venkatapathy, IBM's marketing manager for SMB Business Integration and Solutions. "The only way to get to the SMB space is through low prices, ease of use and making the products channel friendly."

The application category runners up were VeriSign's Anti-Phishing Solution, which combats new forms of identity theft; and Novell's exteNd 5.2 SOA-based suite of infrastructure support software. Open-source software developer JBoss also received an honorable mention for its JBoss 4.0, a lightweight application framework for enterprise-software development.

IBM's ThinkPad finished second in the client device category behind Motion Computing, whose M1400 Tablet PC won, thanks in part to the device's view anywhere display, which works equally well regardless of lighting conditions. Rounding out client devices was AMD's Athlon 64 processor, which also took home the Editors' Choice Award.

Sony garnered two finalist finishes, one for its SAIT-1 Drive in the storage category (in which Computer Associates won with its BrightStor ARCServe Backup and Hitachi's Ultrastar 10k300 hard disk drive was the other runner-up) and the second for its SuperLite Series Mobile Projector VPL-CX75 in peripherals (in which Sharp won with it LL-151-3D LCD monitor, and Xerox was the other runner-up with its Phaser 8400 Solid Ink printer).

Although some observers have had 3Com on life support of late, the networking vendor continues to innovate, winning the mobility category with its Wireless LAN Access Point 7250 and finishing as a finalist in the telephony and networking category with its SuperStack 3 Switch 3200. Cisco won the latter category with its Power over Ethernet standard across its Catalyst switching portfolio, and Avaya's IP Office, Small Office Edition was the other finalist. D-Link's Air Premier DWL-2700AP Ruggedized outdoor wireless access point and Airespace's Wireless Location Server rounded out the mobility category.

Enterasys took security innovation honors with its NetSight Atlas Automated Security Manager, followed by Symantec's Gateway Security 5400 Series and HP's ProCurve Identity Driven Manager; Novell won the Linux group with its SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. Runners up were Wyse Technology's Linux V6 O/S for Thin Clients and Net Integration Technologies' Nitix Autonomic Server Operating System.