Cast Your Vote for Innovator of the Year

Voting is now open for the overall 2009 Innovator of the Year and we need your help to select one Red Hat and one JBoss winner! The Innovation Awards were created to honor individuals and companies who have forged new ground to demonstrate innovative solutions through the use of Red Hat and JBoss products and technologies.

Our judges have poured through countless submissions over the past few months and narrowed the competition down to eleven category winners. From reducing costs, running servers more efficiently and conserving energy to developing products faster, increasing performance and reducing maintenance, these category winners have demonstrated innovative use of Red Hat and JBoss and delivered value to their organizations:

Management Excellence
Red Hat: Whole Foods Market
JBoss: American Family Insurance

Optimized Systems
Red Hat: Verizon Communications Inc.
JBoss: Harvard Business Publishing + Rivet Logic

Superior Alternatives
Red Hat: Union Bank, N.A.
JBoss: GEICO

Carved Out Costs
Red Hat: Discount Tire Company
JBoss: Allianz Australia Ltd

Extensive Ecosystem
Red Hat: Hilti Corporation
JBoss: Optaros + Massachusetts Convention Center Authority

Red Hat and JBoss: Outstanding Open Source Architecture
Ecommerce Inc. + Vizuri

Voting is open through September 3 to select one Red Hat and one JBoss winner from the above category winners. We’ll see you at this year’s Red Hat Summit and JBoss World where our overall Red Hat Innovator of the Year and JBoss Innovator of the Year will be announced at a special ceremony on September 4.

I’d also like to extend a special thank you to this year’s Innovation Awards judges: Lee Congdon, CIO of Red Hat; Craig Muzilla, vice president, Middleware Business for Red Hat; John R. Rymer from Forrester Research, Inc.; Dana Gardner, a principal analyst from Interarbor; Jay Lyman from The 451 Group; and Steven Vaughan-Nichols, editor-in-chief of Practical Technology. We had another great year with exceptional submissions and appreciate your dedication to helping select our category winners.