Pipeline's 2012 Innovation Awards
In yet another close contest, Innovations in Networking saw finalists Tail-f Systems and InfoVista angling for the award for network innovations and advancements in network technologies. InfoVista's Vista360 product provides CSPs with ubiquitous access to network and application performance data via a flexible, easy-to-use, self-service dashboard, while Tail-f's Network Configuration Server relies on network abstraction to streamline and configuration and provisioning in multi-vendor environments. Both entries represented significant innovation, but after the final tally, InfoVista won by a narrow margin.
Alvarion and Orga Systems were the finalists in the Advanced Connectivity category, an award given for championing the enablement of new connectivity models. Alvarion's 4Motion portfolio is driving connectivity in smart communities and smart grids--certainly innovative territory--but Orga Systems came out on top with their OS.Automotive product, a cross-industry collaboration and innovation in M2M and connected vehicles.
Andreas Freund, Orga Systems with Paula Zimmerman, Pipeline
The award for Cloud Innovation, which encompassed SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, ITaaS, hosting, data center, virtualization, and all other cloud-related technologies, came down to a neck-and-neck race between finalists Redknee and Transverse. Both companies entered the race with cloud-driven billing solutions, with Redknee advancing a real-time converged billing and customer care solution based on the Windows Azure public cloud, and Transverse advancing TRACT, an innovative SaaS-based, real-time subscription and usage-based rating and billing solution. In the end, Transverse was selected winner by a single vote.
CEM may be a buzzword in some circles, but it's also fertile territory for innovation, as finalists in the Innovations in CEM category, Subex and Comptel Corporation, handily revealed. While Subex's Vision360 component of their ROCWare provides an impressive level of detail and analysis of the customer experience, ultimately Comptel walked away with the award for its Customer Engagement Solutions. Both entries delivered a compelling view in real-time of the customer experience across multiple domains, but some of the real-time moneitization aspects of Comptel's solution likely gave it the extra votes needed for the win.
