2006 Horizon Award Winners: How They Were Chosen

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The Computerworld Horizon Awards were established in 2005 to make readers aware of cutting-edge technologies from research labs and companies that are looming on the horizon.

Beginning this past May, Computerworld accepted nominations online for innovative technologies that meet the needs of enterprise IT. We received more than 200 nominations. Eligible organizations were required to have a technology that meets one of the following criteria:

• Provides a means of integrating applications across disparate systems and locations.

• Facilitates communication and collaboration among geographically dispersed teams or business units.

• Provides security for corporate information assets and safeguards the privacy of employee and customer information.

• Manages burgeoning needs for information storage and disaster recovery in today's regulated world.

• Provides manageable mobile/wireless computing for office workers, remote employees and business travelers.

• Improves communication and visibility within the supply chain.

• Makes it easier to manage the plethora of computing, networking and storage devices in today's corporations.

• Manages e-commerce and Web initiatives and helps them turn a profit.

• Extracts and leverages critical business intelligence from expanding data stores.

• Develops high-quality in-house software applications that meet business needs -- and does it on time and within budget.

• Makes basic improvements in hardware or software architecture that enhance processing or communication for a wide variety of applications.

Horizon Awards nominations were also collected from a panel of expert scouts, who alerted us to unique technologies in the field. Information collected in all nominations was then sent to a panel of 10 judges, who reviewed and scored the candidates. Based on those evaluations, Computerworld chose 10 Horizon Award winners and 10 honorable mentions. Special thanks go to our five scouts and 10 judges, who helped find and evaluate the winning technologies featured here.

Scouts

This panel of industry experts alerted us to technologies on the horizon:

• Anatole Gershman, global director of research, Accenture Technology Labs

• Leonard Kleinrock, professor, University of California, Los Angeles

• Craig Mathias, principal, Farpoint Group

• David Orenstein, communications and public relations manager, Stanford School of Engineering

• Gus Tai, general partner, Trinity Ventures

Judges

This panel of IT executives helped evaluate dozens of technologies:

• Yuri Aguiar, senior partner, chief technology officer, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

• Cara A. Babachicos, CIO/corporate director, Partners Continuing Care, Partners Healthcare System Inc.

• Phil Bloodworth, U.S. leader, IT effectiveness practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers

• Kathy J. Claypatch, director of IT hosting operations, University of Phoenix, Apollo Group Inc.

• Joe Drouin, vice president, CIO, TRW Automotive Holdings Corp.

• Tony Fuller, vice president of IT, chief technology officer, Rent-a-Center Inc.

• Don Gould, director of IT, Godiva Chocolatier Inc.

• Gerhard Karba, vice president, technology and CIO, Hines Interests LP

• Raymond Karrenbauer, group chief architect, ING Groep NV

• Frank B. Modruson, CIO, Accenture Ltd.

Program coordinators: Gary Anthes, Ellen Fanning and Mari Keefe

See the complete Computerworld Horizon Awards special report.