Tech Innovators Claim Their Awards

IBM took home top honors last night at the VARBusiness 2005 Tech Innovators Awards event in San Francisco. Big Blue triumphed over other top vendor companies for its newly architected P5 570 Server in a competition to reward ingenuity, originality and creativity in technology excellence. The company was judged tops in the Server-Based Computing category in addition to being named the overall VARBusiness Technology Innovator of the Year.

"From an IBM standpoint, our company is built on technology and so we pride ourselves on that, and the pSeries 505 is a good example of that," said Debra Thompson, IBM's vice president of channel management and marketing.

In addition to IBM, several other leading vendors, AMD, Toshiba and 3Com, were also honored. SonicWall, for example, won in two categories, Wireless/Mobility and Client/Network Security.

In addition to the major vendors named Tech Innovators for 2005, VARBusiness recognized up-and-coming challengers as well. Pingtel, for example, was recognized in the open-source/Linux category for its SIP telecom solution, SIPxchange.

"This award is a huge validation for our open-source business model. We also feel it brings a strong value proposition to the channel," said Al Brisard, Pingtel's vice president of marketing.

Now in its third year, the VARBusiness 2005 Technology Innovators Awards has established itself as a premiere competition and event for revealing compelling IT products delivered over the past 12 months. Product submissions this year rose to nearly 550 entries for 11 different technology categories. Entries came in from IT vendors of all sizes and technology disciplines. Categories spanned Printing and Peripherals to Enterprise Software, Client/Network Security to Storage.

As for selecting the 2005 VARBusiness Tech Innovators Award winners, products were judged in two stages: a first-round examination by VARBusiness' team of technology editors, followed by a final selection by a panel of judges from the solution- provider community.

"It's tough to distill the best down to a few. But after working with our judges and editors, VARBusiness has identified true, world-class innovators this year," said editor Lawrence Walsh.

In the Voice & Data Networking category, 3Com won for its 3Com Switch 8800 product. The winning product in this category is a switch targeted at the heart of performance-heavy enterprise networks.

In Components, AMD took home top honors with its AMD 64x2 Dual Core processor. This first-to-market product was designed from the ground up to enable multitasking of complex workloads and to handle both existing systems and 64-bit applications.

In Client Devices, Toshiba was recognized for its super-light laptop that still packs a features-punch. Weighing just over 2 pounds, the Libretto sports a unique design with miniaturized features, including a half-size 802.11 wireless card, 1.8-inch 60-GB hard drive and a compact keyboard.

"From a sales perspective, this award means a lot. We have prided ourselves on being technically innovative and reliable. We are not content going to market being just the low-cost leader," said Jerry Lumpkin, vice president of business channel sales for Toshiba.

In Client/Network Security, VARBusiness honored SonicWall for its PRO 1260 E device, which lets users configure each port on a firewall independently, in custom security zones. And in Servers, IBM won for its eServer P5 570. The winning product in Enterprise Software tackles a range of major business issues. That was Symantec's Veritas Enterprise Vault 6.0 product.

In SMB Software, Microsoft won for its fully customizable business-management solution that integrates critical financial, manufacturing, distribution, customer management, supply chain, analytics and e-commerce data into one streamlined package. That, of course, is Navision 4.0.

Finally, in Storage, VARBusiness honored FalconStor and its IPStor product, which helps VARs protect their customers' information, offering scalable continuous data-replication services to maximize business continuity of mission-critical applications from the desktop and notebook to the data center.

"With our IPStor data-protection solution, the goal was to allow users to leverage their existing storage infrastructure and to make it a cost-effective solution. I think we have accomplished that," said Wendy Petty, vice president of sales for FalconStor.