The winners have been announced for the MEC Awards 2001. The competition, which covered a variety of categories, took place at the Microsoft Enterprise Conference (MEC—formerly the Microsoft Exchange Conference) 2001 in Los Angeles. The awards went to 10 companies from a potential field of more than 700 nominees. (Earnie Glazener, product manager in Microsoft's .NET Enterprise Server Division, noted that nominations were up more than 60 percent over last year's entries.) The judging panel consisted of five distinguished experts: two Microsoft executives—Malcolm Pearson and Michael Risse; editors-in-chief from two industry-leading publications—Windows 2000 Magazine's Karen Forster and .NET Magazine's Jim Minatel; and a respected top industry analyst—Gartner's Simon Hayward.
The Best Solution by a Partner award went to Ascendant TSG's K-Advisor, which uses Exchange 2000 Server's workflow features to create a virtual storage space for all email discussions, decisions, and documents related to a multi-user project. Best Solution by a Customer went to Genisys Consulting's GenASSIST, which uses templates to manage and share contact information, sales performance, and similar data, then organizes the templates into customized digital dashboards. Best Developer Tool went to IT FACTORY's IT FACTORY Development Center for Exchange, the first visual development tool for Microsoft's Exchange Store. Best Infrastructure Product went to a team effort: the IXOS Software and Hewlett-Packard (HP) solution IXOS-eCONserver for MS Exchange with Hewlett-Packard Archival Storage. This solution removes attachments and emailed documents to take the load off Exchange Server databases and provides high-end optical jukebox solutions with storage capacities in the hundreds of terabytes.
Best Management Tool or Utility went to NetIQ's AppAnalyzer, a Web-based reporting and analysis tool that helps administrators manage and monitor Exchange usage. Best Use of Mobile Technologies went to Aspire Technologies (Shenzhen)'s Aspire Unified Messaging System. Best Productivity Solution went to Acrodex's CHRIS (Consolidated Human Rights Information System—developed for Human Rights and Citizenship, Ministry of Community Development, Government of Alberta, Canada), which uses Exchange-enabled data and document storage, workflow, and reporting features to manage and track inquiries and complaints. Best Use of Workflow went to Bay Technologies' CASA Service Centre Workflow Solution, which the Regulatory Services Division of the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) uses to handle Air Operator Certificates and Certificates of Approval for general aviation in Australia. Best Vertical-Focused Solution went to eOptimize's About:Time for Healthcare, which takes advantage of Exchange to facilitate collaboration and to push activity notifications to a desktop or Web browser. Best Use of XML went to InsureTech's InsureTech Pizzazz!, an Exchange 2000—based Agency Company Organization for Research and Development (ACORD) standards—compliant solution for insurance and financial service companies. Web Table 1 lists the finalists in all categories.
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