The Awards that recognized innovative IT initiatives and product leadership were presented at a glittering gala dinner and awards ceremony at the Mina A’ Salam hotel in Dubai. The inaugural Awards, comprising 20 categories- recognized end-users for their achievement in creating new business value through IT-enabled innovation, and vendors for exemplary performance and product leadership.
Whether turning existing infrastructures into the new era of agility, or integrating new technologies successfully into traditional business setups to meaningful ends, the organizations that made it onto the winners list this year serve as inspiration and proof that charting new paths in technology deployment can yield business rewards and industry recognition.
The companies that walked away with the top honours in the end-user category for clearly demonstrating ROI, productivity and efficiency gain are:
Data Centre Project of the Year: Emirates NBD
Mobility Project of the Year: Al Fahim
Network Security Porject of the Year: Dubai e-Government
Network Cabling Project of the Year- RTA
Storage Project of the Year- Abu Dhabi Judicial Department
Virtualisation Project of the Year- King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
Unified Communications Project of the Year- Dubai World Trade Centre
Application Networking Project of the Year- United Arab Shipping Company
Enterprise Telephony Project of the Year- Etisalat
Editor’s Choice for Best Practices in Networking- Emirates Flight Catering
The vendor awards recognized outstanding performance and leadership by companies that provided products and services with a measurable payback and made the most significant impact on the market last year. The criteria for winning included a variety of indicators, including leadership in product innovation, breadth of products and solutions, major customer wins, regional reach and business strategy.
The award for the Network Security Vendor of the Year went to Fortinet, while SonicWALL earned a honourable mention from the panel of judges. EMC walked away with the crystal for the Storage Vendor of the Year, and the award for the Structured Cabling Vendor of the Year was bagged by Leviton.
Avaya rose to the top in the closely-fought category of Enterprise Telephony Vendor of the Year and Cisco emerged as the clear winner for the Wireless Vendor of the Year. Emitac Enterprise Solution was chosen as the winner of the System Integrator of the Year award for its high-profile implementations in the region, while eHosting DataFort was conferred the Managed Service Provider of the Year award.
Two prestigious categories – Networking Value-Added Distributor and Networking Vendor of the Year- were determined by online with the firm which received the most votes in each category winning the award. We received more than 700 votes for the networking VAD category, mostly from Saudi Arabia and UAE.
Due to the overwhelming response from both countries, we felt the need to do justice to their efforts by giving them both deserved recognition. The award in this category was split by geography with Sariya IT Distribution winning the Saudi Arabian Networking VAD of the Year award, while Secureway was named the top Networking VAD of the Year in the UAE.
The contest for the Networking Vendor of the Year was too close to call and went right down to the wire. We received more than 1000 votes, and three vendors ran neck to neck till the end, but HP ProCurve edged ahead of others by cornering 30% of the total votes polled. Cisco was the runner up in this category with 28% votes and Avaya the second runner up with 27.5% votes.
