On August 20th, the Itanium Solutions Alliance presented the Innovation Awards to the recipients for 2008. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art provided the ideal backdrop for the Award Celebration. Over 200 guests from the Itanium ecosystem attended the event, hosted by Pat Gelsinger and Kirk Skaugen of Intel. Winners from the University of Houston, S7 Software, and Protegesoft were presented with attractive awards made of actual Itanium wafers.

Learn More about the Winners of the 2008 Innovation Awards

2008 Innovation Award Animation

Watch Highlights from the 2008 Innovation Awards

Humanitarian Impact: University of Houston bioinformatics research team

Human activity, global warming and toxic waste pose a threat to the stability of microbial communities. The impact on microbial communities' genetic diversity is not fully understood, as in-depth research on the issue has not been ongoing - until now.

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Enterprise Business Application: Protégésoft

The financial services industry is undergoing dramatic change due to globalization, consolidation and partnerships. Financial service institutions (FSIs) are trying to tap into the mass market segment comprised of customers with smaller portfolios. However, new players and novel services are raising customer expectations for greater product range, lower transaction costs and faster delivery of key information.

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Entrepreneurial Innovation: S7 Software

Many companies with demanding transaction processing requirements, such as financial services and healthcare, are porting their database engines to affordable HPC platforms. By migrating existing 32-bit systems to 64-bit, these firms can increase productivity and customer service levels.

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About the 2008 Innovation Award

Eleven industry experts made up the judging panel for this year's Innovation Award program. Judges reviewed Award applications based on level of difficulty, results produced and originality. Entrants applied to one of the three categories and were asked to demonstrate one of the following criteria:

  • Humanitarian Impact applications needed to show an impact on humanity through research, social improvements or other humanitarian efforts;
  • Enterprise Business Application entries were asked to prove either hard business results, such as cost savings and ROI or soft business impact, including customer satisfaction and new product development; or
  • Entrepreneurial Innovation category, open to privately held entities with annual revenues less than $25 million in the previous fiscal year, sought to recognize enhanced business results through deployment of Itanium-based systems achievements in areas such as IT consolidation, increased ROI, increased customer satisfaction and new product development