Once again, we’re excited to announce the finalists for the 2016 Best of Interop awards. The awards recognize groundbreaking products and services as well as innovative startups from among the ranks of Interop exhibitors.
These finalists are helping to advance the IT industry with products and services that solve new problems, or find better, faster, and cheaper ways to deal with the problems we already have. Finalists were selected based on many factors, including the degree to which the product advances the state of the art, the product’s ability to solve a problem or provide value, and the “wow” factor -- that is, the presence of a feature or function that’s unique, surprising, or simply ingenious.
The Interop team received dozens of submissions in 10 categories, including networking, security, mobility, cloud computing, and SDN. Our Best of Interop judges, who include IT executives and practitioners, analysts, and award-winning technology editors, gave their time and expertise to wade through all the submissions and narrow them down to this list.
Judges will get in-depth briefings and demos from the finalists before choosing their final picks and selecting the best of the best – the Grand Award. Winners will be revealed on the Expo floor on Wednesday, May 4, at 12:00 noon in the Interop Theater. Attendees can see the finalists and winners on the Expo Floor, and are invited to stop by the awards ceremony to celebrate with the winners.
(Image: alengo/iStockphoto)
Applications
Applications are fast becoming the lifeblood of a business. The Best of Interop applications category covers a broad swath -- everything from mobile apps to web and cloud applications. To that end, the finalists represent a diverse mix of products: an application development platform, a cloud-based directory, and software for managing application access.
The finalists include:
CollabNet TeamForge
@CollabNet
JumpCloud Directory-as-a-Service for Google Apps
@JumpCloud
(Image: akindo/iStockphoto)
Best Startup
If you want to know what the next big thing will be in technology, simply look at the startup community. The IT industry is changing quickly, and startups are where the action is. It’s evident from our finalists that software, indeed, has eaten the world.
The finalists include:
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Cloud/Virtualization
Cloud computing has become an integral part of today's enterprise infrastructure landscape. That means our cloud category has grown beyond initial offerings to highlight innovators in orchestration, service delivery, and data protection.
The finalists include:
Veeam Cloud Connect Replication for Service Providers
@veeam
VeloCloud Cloud On-Ramp as a Service with VeloCloud Gateways
@Velocloud
(Image: Yevhenii Khodchenkov/iStockphoto)
Data Center
A lot of different elements go into building a data center, and managing all those elements as a whole is likely the most difficult aspect. Our finalist this year offer solutions for managing switch configuration across fabrics, multi-tenant colocation, and application orchestration.
The finalists include:
Cisco Nexus Fabric Manager
@ciscoDC
Fiber Mountain CrossCage Plus
@FiberMountain
Puppet Enterprise 2015.3
@puppetlabs
(Image: Petrovich9/iStockphoto)
Mobility/Wireless
Mobility has become a critical for businesses as the number of wireless devices continues to skyrocket and employees need access from anywhere at any time. In this category, we include WLAN hardware and software as well as innovative applications that advance mobility in the workplace.
The finalists include:
Cisco Flexible Radio Assignment
@Cisco_Mobility
Huawei Agile Distributed WiFi Solution
@HuaweiEnt
PrinterLogic Mobile Printing
@PrinterLogic
(Image: Violka08/iStockphoto)
Networking
It's very interesting times for the networking industry with so many emerging technologies poised to change how enterprises run their networks. In fact, software- networking and network functions virtualization have become so common that they round out our traditional networking category.
The finalists include:
Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)
@Cisco
ExtraHop Discover 1100 Appliance
@ExtraHop
VeloCloud Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN
@Velocloud
(Image: Maxiphoto/iStockphoto)
Performance/Management/Monitoring
Today's IT infrastructure is highly dynamic and distributed, which makes tools to manage and monitor performance even more critical. This year's finalists represent a diverse range of products, illustrating the complex environments IT pros manage.
The finalists include:
ExtraHop Explore Appliance
@ExtraHop
Pluribus VCF Insight Analytics
@pluribusnet
Uila Virtual Infrastructure Performance Management
@Uila_Inc
(Image: lvcandy/iStockphoto)
Security
Security has always been a consideration for IT, but after so many high-profile breaches making headlines it has become a front-and-center priority for virtually every company. This category includes hardware, software, and cloud-based services, and the finalists illustrate a range of protective options.
The finalists include:
Cisco FirePower Next-Generation Firewall
@CiscoSecurity
Somansa Endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
@SomansaTech
VMware Identity Manager
@VMware
(Image: Danil Melekhin/iStockphoto)
SDN
Simply put, software-defined networking is hot. According to research firm IDC, the worldwide SDN market will surge to $12.5 billion by 2020. The market is filled with both startups and industry giants, as illustrated by this year's finalists.
The finalists include:
Aryaka SD-WAN Ultra
@AryakaNetworks
Cisco APIC-EM Release 1.1
@Cisco
(Image: derrrick/iStockphoto)
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