Be Recognized For IT Excellence

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Last week I wrote a blog about the transition that enterprise technology product providers have made in recent years, shifing their focusing toward how a product fits into key IT concepts rather than speeds and feeds.

In the real world, that means there might be less focus on how fast a new system works and more about how it better supports something like analytics at the edge in an Internet of Things implementation. (Perhaps your company has even implemented a similar business-leading IT project worthy of recognition -- more on that in a moment).

Suppliers are moving toward a fresh view of how tech can better enable business success because there's a parallel shift among IT and business managers who buy that technology. It's a new emphasis on gaining value from their technology projects.

Those old metrics surrounding speeds and feeds certainly remain relevant in a decision process. However, what the executives in the C-suite and the front-line workers really want to know is how a new application, a cloud strategy, or an analytics initiative helps the company sell more products, save on operating costs, or learn more about customer likes and dislikes.

People want to know what benefits they or the company will get from a technology initiative. Plus, they want to know that the tech is going to work.

That is why we are announcing the 2017 InformationWeek IT Excellence Awards to recognize outstanding innovation by business users of information technology.

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This new awards program -- applications are being accepted now and are due by March 3 -- replaces the InformationWeek Elite 100 rankings, which were a staple of the IT industry for nearly 30 years. I'll confess that when I worked for competing publications, I kept that list handy for reference year round.

The IT Excellence Awards will recognize the top companies in the core technology categories that are the focus of InformationWeek and Interop ITX: infrastructure, security, cloud, DevOps, and data and analytics, as well as "Overall Excellence in IT." The submission process has been simplified and we’re opening up the awards to companies of all sizes.

Why extend the eligibility to companies of all sizes? It's a sign of the times. Three decades ago, a disproportionately large portion of tech innovation in the enterprise took place in large, diverse companies. Today, with so many companies starting out in business with tech-centric business ideas, leveraging the cloud and new architectures, technology is no longer simply about employee email and financial apps. Products, services, marketing, sales, and other functions have technology at their core. A half dozen employees in shared office space can drive technology a very long way.

If you’d like to nominate your company for recognition as an InformationWeek IT Excellence Award winner, please click on this link to access the application.

Whether you decide to participate in the InformationWeek IT Excellence Awards or not, please join us for Interop ITX -- the independent conference for IT leaders. The conference is aimed at IT professionals, managers, and CIOs, and takes place May 15-19, 2017, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. For those who’ve attended the InformationWeek Elite 100 Conference in the past, you’ll still be able to enjoy the outstanding speakers and topics from the former event as part of the IT Leadership Summit at Interop ITX.

The IT Excellence Awards winners will be announced here online and at Interop ITX in May.