Red Hat Innovator of the Year 2008

2008 Innovation Awards finalists.

I was fortunate to be asked to judge the Red Hat Innovator of the Year awards this year. As I reviewed each of the entries, I was struck by the diversity and creativity of the solutions they described. The range of innovation was fascinating and the business value delivered was outstanding.

This was the second year of the Innovation Awards. A panel of judges, including myself, selected six finalists in a variety of categories. Each had compelling stories of their use of Red Hat and other open source solutions. I encourage you to read their full submissions to see all of the amazing work they’ve done.

The six category finalists that we announced early last week included:

• Delivered Value: Nortel
• Optimized Systems: Infoplex
• Extensive Ecosystem: Freedom OSS and Dun & Bradstreet
• Creative Use: IBM and Raytheon
• Enhanced Security: Likewise Software
• Superior Alternatives: Booz Allen Hamilton

Last Friday at the closing ceremony of the Red Hat Summit in Boston, IBM and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems’ combined work for the US Navy was recognized as the Red Hat Innovator of the Year. A key theme discussed at the Summit this year was customer-, community- and partner-driven innovation, and IBM and Raytheon’s submission in the Creative Use category was outstanding evidence of this type of collaboration.

IBM and Raytheon created an open architecture environment to improve realtime programmer productivity, reduce realtime application development times and reduce the total cost of ownership for the US Navy’s Zumwalt project. Using IBM WebSphere Realtime, Red Hat Enterprise MRG Realtime, BladeCenter and System x servers and leveraging the community around the software, the US Navy was given a first-of-its-kind architecture that has led to further innovation in the development of realtime functionality. It was a very impressive effort.