Editor's Note: See our sister publication, SQL
Server Magazine, for the Best of TechEd winners
in Business Intelligence, Database Development
and Administration, Developer Tools and
Technologies, Web Development, and Most
Innovative Technology. Go to http://www.sqlmag.com and enter InstantDoc ID 96296.
Best Architecture Product
Appistry Enterprise
Application Fabric
The complexity of today's computing
environments creates challenges for developers and administrators who must
make disparate systems work together and
squeeze the best performance possible
from every application on the network.
Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric
works at the application layer to provide
scale-out virtualization, application-level
fault tolerance, and automated management. The company's "scale without fail"
mantra is well suited to organizations running computational applications, image
processing, and database transformations.
Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric's
support for Linux and Windows OSs and .NET, Java, and C/C++ development environments provides a competitive advantage.
—Amy Eisenberg
Best Business
Application Product
Nintex SmartLibrary
Nintex SmartLibrary extends SharePoint Team Sites with advanced document management. Because SmartLibrary is built on Microsoft .NET technology, it fully integrates with SharePoint
sites to maintain SharePoint's look and
feel, and no additional software is required
on client machines. A customizable
workflow process lets you easily design
workflows by using drag-and-drop functionality. Workflow features include serial
and parallel approval at the document and
folder level, progress reporting, reviewer
comments, and customizable email alerts.
SmartLibrary augments SharePoint document libraries with change auditing, statistic reporting, and document undelete
features and includes the ability to publish
approved documents to other systems.
—Blake Eno
Best Connected Systems Product
Neudesic Legacy
Modernization with BizTalk
Server 2006 and Host
Integration Server 2006
Enterprises often use a reliable IBM
mainframe or midrange system to run their line-of-business applications. But
Windows is the preferred front end for new
capabilities that need access to those
systems, such as a check-out kiosk in a
hotel lobby that must work with an IBM
iSeries system. IBM on one side, .NET on
the other—how do you get them to work
together? BizTalk Server and Host Integration Server can help, but a successful
implementation requires someone who
understands both IBM and Microsoft technologies. You might have experts on both
sides, but they don't speak the language of
those across the technological divide. An
expert in legacy modernization from Neudesic can bridge the language gap and make
the difference between a long, painful implementation and a quick, successful one.
—Barb Gibbens
Best Management Product
Opalis Integration Server
Opalis Integration Server is a Run Book
Automation solution that replaces repetitive manual tasks with automated IT best practices. Opalis Integration Server implements ITIL process automation,
including problem-diagnostic, escalation, and repair processes; change management
processes; and maintenance routines. It ensures compliance by automating manual
audits and remediation, minimizing human intervention and thus reducing risk.
Opalis Integration Server provides an easy four-step process for building customized
workflows that requires no scripting. By eliminating repetition and reliably
automating standard IT processes, Opalis Integration Server gives IT the freedom
to deal with exceptions and the focus to support the business.
—Dianne Russell
Best Microsoft Management Product
System Center
Essentials 2007
"Management" covers a broad
range of products—from largeenterprise IT infrastructure tools to small
point solutions. Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 supplies a robust
management solution to an overlooked
segment of the market: companies in
the middle tier. System Center Essentials brings to midsized companies an
integrated management solution that
suits a wide variety of implementations.
Tuned out of the box and easy to install
and set up, System Center Essentials
provides comprehensive monitoring and
reporting, update management, software
deployment, and software and hardware
inventory capabilities. By providing a unified solution that so closely addresses
the unique needs of midsized companies,
System Center Essentials provides tremendous value to a historically underserved market.
—Dianne Russell
Best Mobility Product
Zenprise for BlackBerry
Supporting a burgeoning number of
mobile-device users is taking up ever larger chunks of IT administrators'
time. Zenprise for BlackBerry provides a
comprehensive monitoring scheme that
reduces the complexity of managing a
BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) environment. The product greatly simplifies BES monitoring, troubleshooting, and
problem resolution. Zenprise for BlackBerry is also unique in that it monitors
the multiple variables—such as mobile
device, carrier, and the Exchange environment—that can affect BlackBerry
availability and draws on an extensive
technical knowledge base to explain how
to resolve problems. Especially impressive
is the breadth and depth of status information visible on screen and how easy it
is to drill down to get detailed information
about users, problem causes, and resolution instructions.
—Anne Grubb
Best Office System Product
KnowledgeLake Capture 2007
KnowledgeLake Capture 2007, a batch
scanning and indexing solution for Microsoft SharePoint, supports virtually all scanners on the market and lets you
scan and index files and then store them in
SharePoint 2007 and 2003 in TIFF, PDF,
and XPS file formats. You can scan one
document at a time or scan documents in
batches. If you're scanning images, KnowledgeLake Capture 2007 will use Optical
Character Recognition (OCR) technology
to extract document metadata. The software has a number of scanning and indexing features, including automated forms
processing and the ability to read barcodes
for document separation.
—Blake Eno
Best Security Product
GFI LANguard Network
Security Scanner
GFI's LANguard Network Security
Scanner provides an integrated tool that performs both network security
vulnerability assessment and patch management. The latest release of LANguard
Network Security Scanner incorporates
a comprehensive security vulnerability
checking capability based on OVAL (Open
Vulnerability Assessment Language) and
the SANS Top-20 Internet Security Attack
Targets to provide more than 15,000 vulnerability checks. In addition, LANguard
Network Security Scanner can scan for
open ports as well as blacklisted applications and USB devices. Patch management
capability supports 38 languages and can
deploy as well as roll back patches. A built-in network and software auditing feature
provides reports showing open ports,
installed software, password strength, and
connected USB devices.
—Michael Otey
Best Microsoft Security
Product
Internet Security and
Acceleration Server
Microsoft's ISA Server provides
organizations with edge security and gives users fast and secure accessto Internet resources. ISA Server is an
enterprise-level firewall with support for application-level filtering and content
caching. It also provides comprehensive
alerting and monitoring capabilities. The new ISA Server 2007 release
provides the integrated ability to publish load-balancing servers as well as
Exchange 2007 and SharePoint resources.
There is also a new Branch Office VPN
Connectivity Wizard, flood resiliency, support for LDAP authentication, and a new
single-sign-on capability that allows users
to access a group of published Web sites
without the need to authenticate to each
Web site.
—Michael Otey
Best SharePoint Product
Quest Site Administrator
for SharePoint
Third-party vendors have the opportunity to fill gaps in SharePoint functionality and add value for developers, systems
administrators, and end users. Quest Software's Site Administrator for SharePoint
gives systems administrators a single point
from which they can monitor and manage
all the SharePoint sites on their network.
The product's auto-discovery feature helps
IT professionals address rampant site proliferation on their company networks and
provides visibility into the scope of SharePoint instances. Comprehensive reporting
eases monitoring of critical information
such as storage metrics, traffic usage,
permissions, and site/server health. Site
Administrator also builds on SharePoint's
capabilities around policies and allows IT
pros to deploy and enforce policies across
the network.
—Amy Eisenberg
Best Unified Communication Product
Gold Systems Password
Reset
"Can you reset my password?" is
a refrain familiar to IT Help desk
employees. Password-reset requests
account for 30 percent of Help desk calls,
according to Gartner—with a minimum
cost of around $10 per call. Gold Systems
Password Reset removes the IT administrative costs associated with such calls. It's
a speech-recognition solution, based on
Microsoft Speech Server, which lets users
reset their own passwords by phone. The
product emphasizes security, including
two-factor authentication and an optional
biometric voice-verification module. It also
uses a threat model, which Gold Systems developed with help from a security consultant, to identify and eliminate known
password security vulnerabilities.
—Anne Grubb
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