During the closing ceremony for the 2010 Red Hat Summit and JBoss World last week in Boston, I was pleased to highlight the work of some of our customers using Red Hat and JBoss products to innovate their IT environments. We recognized nine customers across a variety of industries in the fourth annual Red Hat and JBoss Innovation Awards. It was truly a global affair with winners from countries including India, New Zealand, Argentina and the United States in attendance to accept their awards.

The five categories and finalists for 2010 included:

Optimized Systems
Red Hat: LifeSpring Hospitals
JBoss: Travel Channel

Superior Alternatives
Red Hat: Citigroup
JBoss: State of Tennessee

Carved Out Costs
Red Hat: BNZ
JBoss: Nationwide Mutual Insurance

Extensive Ecosystem
Red Hat: Just Dial
JBoss: ANSES

Outstanding Open Source Architecture
Red Hat and JBoss: Union Pacific Corporation

Voting for the Innovator of the Year awards was open to the entire open source and Red Hat community to select the two overall Innovation Award winners – one Red Hat and one JBoss winner. This year’s Red Hat Innovator of the Year Award went to Just Dial, selected for its migration from a Microsoft DOS-based client server system to a web-based system powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Just Dial was able to increase the flexibility and decrease IT and licensing costs by migrating from proprietary software to open source solutions.

The JBoss Innovator of the Year went to Travel Channel. The company was selected for its implementation of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss Operations Network to manage and monitor its website in an effort to ensure visitors have positive experiences with no downtime or viewing difficulties. Travel Channel used open source solutions to enhance risk management and capacity planning, increase throughput 20-fold and to increase application availability.

These companies are using open source to create a competitive advantage in their IT organizations and they have achieved impressive results. Please read more about all of the Innovation Awards winners by viewing their full submissions and case studies.