Virtualization Review Hands Out Awards at VMworld

The winners of the First Annual Virtualization Review VMworld Best of Breed Awards were announced at VMworld, and our Oct-Nov print magazine issue will include an article on the winners. Between now and then, however, I wanted to let everybody know who those winners are, and how we selected them. First, the eight categories, along with triumphant companies and products:

Best Cloud Application
Company: HotLink
Product: HotLink Hybrid Express

Best Backup and Data Protection Product
Company: Dell AppAssure
Product: AppAssure

Best Free Tool
Company: Veeam
Product: Veeam ZIP

Best Innovation
Company: Cloud Physics
Product: Cloud Physics

Best IaaS Cloud
Company: Opscode
Product: Chef

Best SMB Product
Company: Dell
Product: Dell vStart 100

Best Cloud Management Tool
Company: Puppet Labs
Product: Puppet Enterprise

Best New Product of 2012
Company: Nutanix
Product: Nutanix Complete Cluster

How we selected them: Our august panel of judges was composed of myself and three industry experts who were only hampered by their surfeit of industry knowledge, which made it hard for them to winnow down the list. Despite the challenge, however, meeting by meeting, we eventually came up with choices that made us all comfortable. I agreed not to reveal the names of the judges (lest they be called out for making incorrect choices by representatives of the non-winning companies), but I can assure you they were more than up to the job.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/10/2012 at 12:48 PM