The 2009 Red Hat and JBoss Innovation Awards

Red Hat is pleased to announce the 2009 Red Hat and JBoss Innovation Award Winners. The Innovation Awards were created to recognize the technological achievements, outstanding use, innovation and extension of Red Hat and JBoss solutions by Red Hat customers, partners and the open source community.

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We would like to congratulate each of the category winners for their captivating stories of technical achievement and encourage you to read their submissions and vote for the 2009 Red Hat and JBoss Innovators of the Year.

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Category Winners


MANAGEMENT EXCELLENCE: Recognition of the impressive use of management tools, including Red Hat Network and JBoss Operations Network, to drive down TCO and increase ROI.

  • Red Hat: Whole Foods Market
    Whole Foods Market a leader in the U.S. natural and organic foods industry and America's first national certified organic grocer has more than 275 stores, nine distribution centers, and more than 54,000 team members in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The company was selected for its use of Red Hat Satellite to manage its Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems that resulted in reduced costs, reallocated resources and the ability of the Whole Foods IT department to focus on strategic business initiatives.
  • JBoss: American Family Insurance
    American Family Insurance is the nation's third-largest mutual property and casualty insurer and the 14th-largest property and casualty insurance company with more than $4.1 billion in policyholder equity, and a network of 4,000 agents who serve 19 states. American Family Insurance is migrating to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform from WebSphere, and was selected for its use of JBoss Operations Network to manage its servers and its close work with the JBoss engineering team that plans to provide benefits to the open source community and commercial enterprises looking at JBoss ON.

OPTIMIZED SYSTEMS: Recognition of striking performance, scalability and/or usability enhancements delivered with open source solutions.

  • Red Hat: Verizon Communications Inc.
    Verizon, a Dow 30 company, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. Building out the nation's most advanced all-digital, fiber-optic network straight to customers' homes and businesses, Verizon was selected for its consolidation and standardization on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its SAP and PeopleSoft Enterprise Resource Planning applications to reduce costs, increase performance, and allow the ability to scale for growth. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the company now runs its servers more efficiently, with minimal need for additional equipment, bolstering Verizon's extensive energy conservation efforts.
  • JBoss: Harvard Business Publishing + Rivet Logic
    Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harvard University, providing a wide range of publications - both print and online - that target academic, enterprise and individual manager markets. Rivet Logic, is a consulting and systems integration firm that provides professional open source services and solutions for organizations such as HBP. Rivet Logic and HBP were selected for the innovative use of open source solutions from Red Hat, JBoss, and Alfresco at HBP, that have enabled increased stability and the ability to develop products faster, bundle existing products more efficiently, and generate new revenue opportunities by increasing site traffic and offering richer, fresher, and more varied content.

SUPERIOR ALTERNATIVES: Recognition of the most successful migration from proprietary solutions to open source alternatives.

  • Red Hat: Union Bank, N.A.
    Union Bank has 335 branch offices in California, Washington, and Oregon; two international offices; and facilities in six other states. It is the 16th largest bank in the U.S. based on assets at March 31, 2009. Union Bank was selected for its operating platform migration from AIX to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its Websphere to JBoss migration to support its mission critical applications at an improved price, greater performance and less up-keep. Union Bank used open source solutions to increase time to market, reliability and return on investment.

  • JBoss: GEICO (Government Employees Insurance Company)
    GEICO is the third-largest private passenger auto insurer in the United States. The company provides auto insurance coverage for more than 9 million policyholders. GEICO was selected for its evaluation and choice of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform to reduce total cost of ownership by more than 30 percent and overall resource utilization went from above 50 percent to under 10 percent, which allowed significant room for scalability without having to acquire additional hardware.

EXTENSIVE ECOSYSTEM: Recognition of the use of Red Hat or JBoss' expanding partner ecosystem to create innovative architectures based on open source solutions.

  • Red Hat: Hilti Corporation
    Hilti, a leading-edge technology provider to the global construction industry, with almost 20,000 employees in more than 120 countries around the world, offers products, systems and services to the global construction industry. Hilti was selected for its standardization of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to handle its SAP® applications, including SAP ERP and SAP Customer Relationship Management, with more than 5TB of data. Hilti migrated its critical systems from a Tru64 UNIX based system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System (GFS). The migration to Red Hat solutions delivered increased application performance, reduced electricity costs and provided the company with a long-term platform strategy.



  • JBoss: Optaros + Massachusetts Convention Center Authority
    Optaros, is an open source consulting firm that specializes in the development of custom applications for clients through the Assembled Web. The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA), owns and oversees the operation of four major facilities, including the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC). According to the MCCA, it has generated $2.3 billion in economic impact over the past five years in the greater Boston area and is the eighth busiest convention center in North America. Optaros and MCCA staff worked together to rebuild the MCCA's event management system. The product, known as ShowBiz, helps streamline the detailed process of setting up large-scale events, and is now completely run on an open source stack that was designed and assembled by Optaros. Approximately 90 percent of the MCCA's day-to-day operations now run on open source solutions from JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

CARVED OUT COSTS: Recognition of customers who have leveraged open source solutions to significantly cut costs and extract added value from existing systems.
  • Red Hat: Discount Tire Company
    Discount Tire, the world's largest independent tire and wheel retailer, has more than 725 stores in 21 states, and both Tire Business and Modern Tire Dealer ranked Discount Tire Company as the No. 1 independent tire retailer based on the number of retail outlets and annual revenues. Discount Tire has long been a Red Hat Enterprise Linux customer and recently deployed Red Hat Satellite to support the rapidly growing e-commerce side of the business. With Red Hat Satellite, Discount Tire was able to keep costs contained, comply with strict PCI security standards, and increase IT staff productivity due to the ability to easily provision, maintain, and manage servers.

  • JBoss: Allianz Australia Limited
    Allianz is Australia's fourth largest general insurer with over two million policyholders, operates across Australia and New Zealand and offers a wide range of insurance and risk management products and services.

OUTSTANDING OPEN SOURCE ARCHITECTURE: Recognition of the use of both Red Hat and JBoss with related partner offerings to create innovative architectures based on open source solutions.
  • Ecommerce Inc. + Vizuri: Ecommerce, Inc.
    Ecommerce Inc. is a global web hosting and ecommerce services provider with a sound customer base of several hundred thousand individuals and businesses from around the globe, and currently hosts more than half a million domains on its infrastructure. Vizuri, www.vizuri.com, is a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner and Preferred JBoss Certified Systems Integrator committed to delivering innovation by utilizing open source solutions to provide cost-effective, enterprise solutions. Ecommerce and Vizuri were selected for their work in developing Imperia, an Intelligent Data Center web services hosting platform that aims to increase customer service, reduce customer turnover, reduce operational costs, and increase customer reliability using Red Hat, JBoss, Hyperic and EnterpriseDB solutions. Ecommerce chose Vizuri to develop the project because of its excellent track record with Red Hat based open source solutions and strong placement within the industry.
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