Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards Opens for Nominations

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- The Itanium Solutions Alliance has announced the call for entries for the 2010 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards. The fourth annual awards program once again recognizes inspiring and impactful work across enterprise and research organizations in which Intel® Itanium-based servers play a critical role. Entries will be accepted through April 12th, 2010 in four distinct categories: Mission-critical Data, Data Center Modernization, Computationally Intensive Applications and Humanitarian Impact; in the latter category, a $25,000 prize will be awarded to the winner. Winners and finalists will be honored at an exclusive event held concurrently with the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

"As businesses, researchers and the IT organizations that support them move beyond the 'survival mode' of the economic downturn and look to the future, I cannot imagine a better time to be part of an awards program that is, at its core, about driving innovations that make an important difference in peoples' lives," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Alliance. "We again invite and welcome those who comprise the vibrant ecosystem behind Itanium-based servers to join us in recognizing the vendors, users and developers whose dedication and resourcefulness extend the unique advantages of the Itanium architecture to lead business success, achieve groundbreaking discoveries and implement life-saving infrastructures."

The Alliance hosts the annual Innovation Awards to support the organization's mission to accelerate the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium-based solutions. Developers, enterprises, small and mid-sized businesses, and research institutions are all strongly encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to earn highly visible recognition for their work on Itanium-based systems.

Winners in the four categories will be chosen by an independent panel of judges selected for their leadership in innovation and relevant category expertise. The winner in the Humanitarian Impact category will be announced in May, and other category winners are to be revealed live at the Innovation Awards Celebration on September 14th, 2010 in San Francisco. Entrants are welcome to submit to one or more categories, but are required to provide a unique application of an Itanium-based solution for each entry:

• The Mission-critical Data category recognizes the successful implementation of a database or data warehousing solution that achieves outstanding results;
• Organizations making or leading the transition from a mainframe-based infrastructure to one that takes advantage of Itanium's open architecture framework will be considered for the Data Center Modernization category;
• The Computationally Intensive Applications category focuses on organizations that have applied their systems to tackle massive workloads which demand consistently high performance and scalable shared resources;
• The Humanitarian Impact category award, and the $25,000 cash prize to support the organization's work, will be bestowed upon the most innovative implementation of an Itanium-based solution where the system demonstrates a positive impact for humanity through research, social improvements or other efforts. Examples of eligible uses include, but are not limited to, laboratory research, medical and emergency systems management, and natural resource management.

The program's 2009 winners were Kiwok Nordic AB of Sweden, CESGA of Spain, Mobiltel of Bulgaria, and Bernalillo County of New Mexico, USA.

About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium® Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium®-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission-critical computing solutions based on the Intel® Itanium® architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org

© 2010. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

SOURCE Itanium Solutions Alliance