The Itanium Solutions Blog

Now that all entries to the 2009 Itanium Innovation Award program have been submitted, I want to thank all of you who shared your innovative and compelling Itanium-based solutions with the Alliance. We received entries from 14 countries on five continents, again demonstrating the global success of the Itanium platform.

Check back with us on July 14 when we will announce the winner in the Humanitarian Impact category and the three finalists in each of the other three categories. And of course we hope that you will join us for the Awards ceremony during Fall IDF in San Francisco!

The submission period closes today for the 2009 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards. If your organization, partners, or customers are using Itanium-based servers to achieve impactful results, we encourage you to submit. For more information and to fill out the submission form, visit the Innovation Awards website. If you have any questions or need help in preparing your submission, please email awards@itaniumsolutions.com.

The Itanium Solutions Alliance announced today its panel of high-profile industry leaders who will serve as judges for this year’s Itanium Innovation Awards competition. Having  this  high quality panel of industry visionaries evaluating and selecting category winners provides an increased level of credibility to this prestigious global competition. Read bios of our judging panel here. This year’s judges include:

· Joe B. Alexander, strategy and technology consultant; educator
· Ken Cayton, president, Systematic Market Analysis
· Jon Erickson, editor in chief, Dr. Dobb’s
· Dr. Barry Hieb, chief scientist, Global Patent Identifiers
· Sverre Jarp, chief technology officer, CERN openlab
· Dr. Rinaldo Jose, president and co-founder, Lakeway Technologies
· George McQuilken co-founder, eCoast Angels Investment Network
· Michelle (Mickey) Pierce, senior product manager, Mainframe Migration Alliance, Microsoft
· Dr. Andrew Razeghi, lecturer, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
· Clay Ryder, president, The Sageza Group
· Dr. Mark K. Smith, executive director, Universal Parallel Computing Research Center and managing director, Gelato Federation
 · Michael Vizard, director of strategic content, Ziff-Davis Enterprise

Our goal is to recognize excellence and innovation in use of Itanium systems to solve complex and challenging computing problems. Judges will evaluate submissions in four categories: Mission-Critical Data, Data Center Modernization, Computationally Intensive applications, and Humanitarian Impact.

Deadline for entries is Wednesday, June 3, 2009. For more information on submissions visit the Innovation Awards microsite. We will recognize our winners at a celebration in their honor at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art  in September during Intel’s fall IDF. If you will be at IDF and are interested in attending the event, please send us an email awards@itaniumsolutions.com.

I want to talk about the innovation happening in APAC and the 2009 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards. Last year, two member companies from APAC, namely Protegesoft and S7 Software, were winners in two out of the three categories. While I did expect that APAC companies would do well at the awards (I have met many with very innovative applications), I certainly did not expect to find two winners from APAC. I hope that after last year’s success, we will get even more submissions this year from APAC companies and that APAC will provide at least one winner this year. (I wanted to say that APAC will provide all the winners this year but that might incur the “wrath” of my other colleagues in the US and EMEA.

The Alliance extended the deadline to submit for this award to June 3rd. If you are developing a submission and need assistance, I suggest an email to awards@itaniumsolutions.com.

I also wanted to share that I finally caught the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” two weeks ago (yes, I am a little behind with my movies)… and no, I am not going to start gushing about how great the movie was (you have all heard and read about that already). What a great story though, written by an Indian - very creative.

And in the context of what I mention above – not only can Asians write great stories; we can also develop great application software… even better when it takes advantage of the capabilities inherent on an Itanium based system.

Here’s to another Asian winner in the ISA Innovation Awards - Go APAC!

2008 Humanitarian Winner: University of Houston

The deadline for entries is June 3rd, 2009.

Don’t miss this opportunity to nominate a worthy organization who is using Itanium to achieve impactful results. The winner in each category will receive valuable publicity, professionally produced promotional materials, and will be featured in an active campaign that showcases their solution. One category, Humanitarian Impact, includes a $50,000 cash award for the winning submission.

Visit the Innovation Awards microsite for more information.

If you have any questions at all or need help in preparing a submission, please email awards@itaniumsolutions.com.