In its first announcement since joining forces with the ASP Industry Consortium (ASPIC), announced the five winners of the second annual ASPire awards yesterday at the Internet World Fall 2001 conference in New York City.
The ASPire awards, which honor best practices in the ASP industry, were due to be announced in October but according to Paula Hunter, chairperson of the ASP section of CompTIA, results were delayed due to events of September 11:
“It’s been hard finding a venue big enough since then and also hard keeping the winners in suspense. We were keen to let them know before the end of the year,” she explained before making yesterday’s announcement.
The awards were given in five categories: Delivery and Enablement, Integration, Management and Operations, Service Satisfaction, and Innovative Technology-Wireless.
The winners were chosen by an independent review board of ASP industry experts from International Data Corporation (IDC), Gartner Dataquest, McKinsey & Co. and Enterprise Management Associates.
The five winners for each catagory, selected from a total of fourteen finalists were:
- Delivery and Enablement — Hotel and Restaurant Systems (HRS), a Germany-based firm, for rapidly deploying a property management system, NIMETA, into the Berlin Hotel.
- Integration — IBM Corp. for the successful integration of enterprise management systems into a single framework for Centerprise Services, a management solutions provider for the capital market organizations. The result was significant reductions in the number of systems that need to be managed and maintained, as well as savings in internal and external auditing expenditures.
- Innovative Technology – Wireless — MH2Technologies, Ltd. for providing an extensive wireless network system to Beazer Homes, a large homebuilding firm in the U.S. Builders were able to better manage the home construction process with improved communication between employees in the field, suppliers, and the corporate office.
- Management and Operations — Multrix Group, based in the Netherlands, for implementing a centralized and standardized IT operations & management system which provides unified access and remote control across all offices/locations of Eurosis.
- Service Satisfaction — Yube, Inc. for successfully deploying an intelligent customer services application suite, providing more efficient and less expensive global customer services to Comstock Systems, an enterprise management software provider.
“This year’s winners show more than ever how ASPs are serving a broad range of industries. A wide range of applications are now being deployed via the ASP model,” says Hunter.
“There is also a strong international flavor and we are seeing an increasingly diverse set of users. This shows how the ASP model is pervasive globally and among both large and small businesses,” she adds.
“For many companies, the ASP model has proven to be an effective way of improving efficiency, time-to-market and service levels. The recipients of the ASPire awards highlight how ASP services can bring about many of these benefits to organizations,” comments Meredith Whalen, vice president, ASP, BSP and Wireless Services at IDC, and independent review board member.
Says Reza Ghorieshi, global technical strategist at IBM: “We are proud to have received the award in the integration category, The awards also show us how diversely ASP solutions are being implemented within specific vertical markets and how successfully deployment of these applications can be achieved.”
