BT eBusiness Innovation Awards, FT Awards Announced

Two major sets of Internet awards were announced in the U.K.
this week: the seventh annual BT eBusiness Innovation Awards and
the third annual Financial Times Business Web Site of the Year
awards.

At the awards ceremony sponsored by BT,
the overall winner of the 1999 award for eBusiness Innovation went
to M.A.R.S. plc, for its
Multi-media Archival and Retrieval Service.

Among the other winners were Eyretel plc, Market Harborough
Building Society, UPS, and, gaining the public sector award,
Mid-Staffordshire General Hospitals Trust and the Avon & Somerset
Constabulary.

At Tuesday’s FT sponsored ceremony,
IBM was the winner in the Large
Organisation category for its online gateway to corporate information
and e-commerce capabilities. Samsung
was runner-up.

Terra Nova won the award
for the Finance category, for its site featuring online insurance products.

In the Small to Medium Enterprise category, the winner was
ComponentSource, an online
one-stop shop for software components.

The BBC Natural History Unit took
the prize for the Public Sector, for its online picture library service.

“Each year these awards reveal another landmark in the fast
evolution of the webs economic impact,” said Peter Martin, editorial
director, Internet Activities, Financial Times.

“1999 is no exception and marks a watershed in how the
Internet is used with more people online doing more business
online in more countries. As our own success online shows,
the FT and its readers continue to be very much at the heart
of a revolution that looks like sprinting far into the next
century.”

A special prize for the Web Site of the Decade was
voted by FT readers, and was awarded to
Yahoo and its
MyYahoo.com service.