Archiving/Backup Product of the Year

Winner: i365, A Seagate Company, EVault Plug-n-Protect

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The regulatory landscape is placing new archiving demands on enterprises and vendors are responding to those demands by changing the way that archiving software is being bought. One way that the process can be improved is by closer alignment of the hardware and software elements. Sourcing components separately can be a time-consuming expertise and then there’s the need to construct those elements into a single, viable system – something else that eats into IT managers’ valuable time.

For the first time ever, EVault Software is bundled with hardware. Buying a bundled solution makes it more economical for the customer and increases the deal size for the reseller (the customer is not only buying software now; it’s also buying hardware). It also fits in with a range of other EVault products.

What the judges said:
"Evault seems well planned and well thought out."

"This is a product that has been designed with the user in mind. The bundling together of hardware and software has improved the usability and has greatly improved the efficiency of the product."

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Cloud/SaaS Service of the Year

Winner: A-Server Datacenter-As-A-Service

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    Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics around at the moment. That interest was reflected in the volume of entries that we had for this category.

What made the DAAS offering stand out was the attention to detail. The software enables service providers to set up their own clouds using a preconfigured, standardised, software and hardware stack. The company says that because of the way that it has automated so many aspects, it has improved the rollout speed for a new service.

It’s also addressed one of the key issues that enterprises who want to move to the cloud face – that of avoiding being tied to a large vendor, such as Amazon or Google, with a proprietary offering. Just as the industry has moved away from single-vendor lock-in, the world of cloud computing appears to be welcoming its return. DAAS provides a flexible approach to enterprises that want to avoid this type of lock-in.

What the judges said:

"What really counts here is speed. To enable the implementation of a fully-configured data centre in the cloud within six to eight weeks is an impressive achievement."

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Desktop Software Product of the Year

Winner: Appsense Environment Manager 8.0

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One of the ways that the enterprise IT world has changed is in the move away from the standardized desktop. Companies can longer rely on a one-size-fits-all approach.

Environment Manager 8.0 is an interesting product. It allows a degree of desktop personalisation that enables standardized virtual desktop environments to be fully and automatically personalized “on demand”, without cumbersome profiles or scripts. It uniquely decouples corporate policy and personalization data from the desktop, manages it independently and applies it to user devices on-demand, while giving IT the ability to deliver these capabilities via multiple delivery methods.

Rachel Chalmers of the 451 Group recently recognized AppSense as a “pioneer in separating user settings and preferences from the underlying OS and applications.” She as well as other analysts have recognized that persistent personalization is critical for enterprise-wide VDI.

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Green Product of the Year

Winner: Sentilla Energy Manager

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The major problem faced by all data centre managers is how to reduce power consumption. It’s going to be a key factor in much of modern data centre development and one of the most essential elements in this process will be the actual measuring of power. Not many products provide accurate, up-to-date information of power consumption at equipment level. Sentilla scores heavily here: it provides real-time statistics from a variety of sources, all bundled with a powerful analysis engine so that the data centre manager can keep track of the current state of play of all the equipment within the centre.

What the judges said:
"This is just the kind of thing someone like me, with 80KW of data centre power to try to rein in, would buy.”

"This is a superbly conceived product. At a time when data centre managers are obsessed with keeping energy costs low and monitoring consumption exactly, this is a product that ticks all the right boxes."

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Infrastructure Product of the Year

Winner: Zeus Traffic Manager 5.1

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The Zeus Traffic Manager is aimed at enterprises running web servers (ie all of them). It works by allowing organisations to see which of their customers are only online and helps to maintain connections with them so transactions can be processed even when a site is busy. A key feature of the product is that it re-allocates resources when a server is starting to struggle ensuring that valued customers aren’t left in limbo.

Zeus is an old hand at this game, having won Techworld’s awards before with various products, but this time round, Traffic Manager proved to be a clear winner. The combination of meeting a real industry need with straight-forward, easily manageable software was an irresistible combination.

What the judges said:
"I'm a Zeus user and it's excellent."

"With Traffic Manager, Zeus continues to provide everything required to optimise and secure web traffic, but what is key about the product is the ease with which complex (behind the scenes) configurations and deployments can be made."

"Zeus has been winning some pretty impressive deals with its Traffic Manager product, and it’s not standing still as illustrated by its recent announcements relating to cloud-based application traffic. And of course, it’s always good to see a British company do well!"

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Mobility/Wireless Product of the Year

Winner: Meraki MR14

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This proved to be an interesting category to judge with the judges weighing up the merits of old-established players against an up-and-coming new player. There was plenty of support for Ruckus with its ZoneFlex Enterprise, a product that may well have won this category in another year, but the eventual winner, Meraki’s MR14 was an outstanding winner.

It was the concept that most amazed the judges, Meraki offers users first cloud-managed wireless LAN in the industry. The Meraki Cloud Controller manages the MR14 (and other Meraki APs) through a web-based interface, providing centralised management, authentication, monitoring, and performance optimisation. A cloud-based AP means that a wireless network can be configured in minutes not days and, of course, has an enormous advantage over conventional APs when it comes to handling upgrades.

The possibilities for enterprises are limitless. One network administrator will now be able to handle thousands of connections all from a single interface. The product offers simplicity, invention and cost-effectiveness – one day, all wireless will be like this.

What the judges said:

"It would be a mistake to see Meraki’s system as simply a clever way of implementing wireless technology, although it is that too. Its most ingenious feature is that it virtualises its management core as a cloud service, a template that shines a path for all network infrastructure."

"This is a great product. Forward-thinking, innovative and setting a new standard for wireless technology. For a new company, it’s gathered an impressive number of blue-chip customers very quickly."

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Network Management Product of the Year

Winner: up.time 5

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One judge said, up.time continues to set the pace when it comes to management performance. It was up against some slick and very effective competitors in this year’s competition, yet it held sway. What is particularly effective is the virtualisation management, an Achilles’ Heel for many competing product, yet one that up.time has taken in its stride.

An old favourite with Techworld, Up.time 5 builds on the fine work in previous versions. This has now been recognised by other consultancies: Gartner, The 451 Group, IDC, and others, are increasing the company’s recognition as an alternative for IT performance management. Our sister title, CIO Magazine, rhapsodised its use at Mount Sinai hospital. “Mount Sinai Hospital uses uptime to monitor its own service levels, verify the SLA data that its data-center management service provides, and to help with capacity planning and migration on a virtualization project that includes both Hyper-V and VMware-based servers as well as a range of Unix servers and specialised applications.”

What the judges said:
"Up.time proves that it has what it takes, time and time again. It’s constantly refreshing the product and even though there is plenty of competition out there, it really is the network management tool that an IT manager would need."

"I’ve used up.time and it’s better than the key competitors."

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Security Product of the Year

Winner: BeCrypt Trusted Client

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The security product of the year is always a hotly contested category and this year was no exception. When it came to the final discussions there were no fewer than five products still being discussed as possible winners – a reflection of the stiff competition for this accolade and the quality of the products on offer.

In the end, the Becrypt product won it – the judges were bowled over by the simplicity of the product. Trusted Client works by delivering a secure yet mobile working capability on a USB stick. It allows users to work remotely on machines that are not being managed by a corporate computing department.

The fact that the company counts the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office among its customers speaks volumes about the way that its product has been perceived.

What the judges said:

"Any organisation that worries over the demands of remote access, especially in the field, will be attracted by the concept of being able to launch a full-featured but secure environment from a humble USB stick. Beautifully implemented, this is a product as sophisticated as it is simple."

"While it may be long-predicted, we’ve not yet seen adoption of virtual desktop technologies outside of closed environments, inside the firewall. One of the reasons for this is security, which is why offerings from companies like BeCrypt are so interesting as they open up the potential to a much wider set of scenarios."

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Storage Product of the Year

Winner: Dell EqualLogic PS6000

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The storage market has shifted considerably in the last few years. The ever-increasing demands on data has meant that storage arrays have become more sophisticated to deal with a new generation of SANs.

The Dell EqualLogic PS Series was the standout product in this category. It has been designed to simplify the deployment and administration of consolidated storage. One of the key aspects of the product is its ability to deliver rapid SAN deployment combined with easy-to-use management software. One reviewer singled out the wide range of features and the cost benefits of the product. “The new PS6000 family of IP SAN appliances clearly deliver on Dell’s performance promises but offer a lot more besides. Support for virtualised environments is a high priority and the fact that snapshots, thin provisioning and replication are included makes this a great value appliance.”

What the judges said:

"The Dell product impressed with its completeness. It is provided as standard with SSD technology but offers full support for legacy SANs. Load balancing is integrated and capacity plannng is assisted with the thin provisioning option, thereby eliminating the need for what would typically be add-on products."

"The PS6000 was a clear winner. None of the other candidates combined the same range of features with simplified storage management and low cost base."

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Virtualisation Product of the Year

Winner: VirtenSys V10 4000 Series 10

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The virtualisation product of the year was an award that tapped into a growing interest in virtualisation – it’s become the ‘must-have’ technology of the past couple of years. That interest was reflected by the large number of entries for this award reflecting the entire range of virtualisation technologies – server virtualisation, storage virtualisation and desktop virtualisation. Judges looked at different types of products, all offering something new.

However, the judges finally plumped for a different type of product; one that offered I/O virtualisation – this is an area that has been somewhat neglected by the virtualisation community, even though many applications are I/O rather than CPU intensive.

The ethos behind the product is rather neat: The Virtensys switches use a proprietary I/O virtualisation technology that consolidates server I/O resources before virtualising these resources and sharing them between the connected servers.

What the judges say:

"The VirtenSys product brings a new degree of flexibility to servers by decoupling server from I/O and thereby freeing up what has been a fixed relationship and therefore a limiting factor to date."

"I/O virtualisation has been an almost secret aspect of virtualisation, yet the company that gets the technology right has an enormous amount to offer its customers. VirtenSys is an example of a company that has been forward-thinking and has issued a great product to meet a genuine industry need."

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Virtualisation Switches Project of the Year

Winner: UKSA for its use of Force.com
Runner up: Private Mobile Networks, Rapid GSM

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The UK Sailing Academy (UKSA) is a charity set up with the aim of providing sailing experience to youngsters in an effort to build their teamwork and leadership skills. As a charity, cash is at a premium and the organisation cannot invest huge amounts in its IT infrastructure – every penny that is spent on hardware or software, is a penny that can’t be spent on sailing.

UKSA has long been a far-sighted organisation, looking to technology to drive maximum value from its infrastructure – it was an early adopter of the SaaS delivery model but has been looking to take that one stage further. Last year, it adopted Salesforce’s Force.com model to improved its customer responsiveness. The use of this software has benefited the organisation in a number of ways. It has reduced the IT overhead, it has improved the ability to handle software upgrades, it has freed up more staff time and given UKSA’s sales team greater access to real-time information to improve their responsiveness.

It was heartening to see an organisation that was not only thinking of short term benefits but also looking to the future. UKSA has the stated aim of moving to a cloud-driven model for all its software needs in the future and it was this marriage of short-term gain and long-term planning that won UKSA the award for the best project of the year.

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