Excellence Awards 7
EWEEK ANNOUNCES THE WINNERS AND FINALISTS IN ITS ANNUAL SEARCH FOR TECHNOLOGY’S BEST
Things certainly have changed since we announced to keep IT resources secure from external threats or the need
the winners of the first e Week Excellence Awards to put solid computing tools in the hands of workers.
seven years ago. The challenges and problems facing The seventh annual e Week Excellence Awards winners
IT today require new capabilities and greater integra- come from longtime titans of technology as well as small
tion functionality than was the case in 2000. upstarts using open-source technologies. But all the winners
Back then, companies felt that they had finally grasped the are the same in that they are providing the ingenuity and
whole business on the Web thing, not knowing in a few years features that businesses need to stay on the cutting edge.
they would have to deal with a 2.0 version of the Web. And The Excellence Awards program was open to any enterprise
while we watched the death of the old ASP (application service technology product announced in 2006 and released before
provider)-hosted model, few of us realized that it would come the end of the first quarter of 2007.
back with a vengeance as on demand and SAAS (software as The e Week editorial staff judged the entries.
a service). We’re pleased to offer readers this annual guide to excellence,
But some things never change, such as the constant struggle including the winners and finalists in all categories. ´
Boys & Girls Clubs
are winners, too
IN ANY GIVEN YEAR, THOUSANDS OF ENTERPRISE IT PRODUCTS
and services are released. Determining those that are most
compelling for evaluation—let alone for purchase—is a huge
challenge among e WEEK readers, and it’s one that we hope the
Excellence Awards program helps mitigate. In some small—but,
we hope, meaningful—way, the program also is designed to help
mitigate the challenge of engaging underserved youth.
Since the dawn of the program, proceeds from the entry
fees have been donated to organizations that use technology
to help young people. For the past several years, we have
chosen to donate program proceeds to the Boys & Girls Clubs
of America, for use in programs that leverage technology. This
year is no exception.
e WEEK is proud to announce that it is donating a total of $70,000
to Boys & Girls Clubs in areas that map to our company’s offices
across the country. As we did last year, we will also be making a
e WEEK’s Eric Lundquist (center) meets with Boys & Girls Clubs reps.
donation to Boys & Girls Clubs in areas ravaged by—and still by no
means fully recovered from—Hurricane Katrina.
In the past, the clubhouses have used the donations to,
among other things, purchase new computers, fund the
yearly salary of a technology teacher, and teach kids to build
and maintain Web sites—truly, technology driving growth.
