Red Hat announces the winners of the JBoss Innovation Awards 2008
Red Hat just announced the results of its JBoss Innovation Awards. As one of the judges, I can attest to the impressive quality of the submissions and the innovation they represent. Most importantly, the awards demonstrate one of the most interesting things that open source enables: customer innovation, as opposed to mere vendor innovation.
The Awards consisted of eight categories, ranging from business process automation (BPA) and service?oriented architecture (SOA) implementation to user experience and ecosystem. Entries were judged based on the solution's creativity and innovation, measurable return on investment (ROI), identifiable improvements to the business, improvement of processes and ability to overcome technology challenges.
Here's just one winner that demonstrates the power that open source gives back to customers:
Daiwa Securities America (www.daiwausa.com), focused on the sales and trading of Japanese and U.S. equities, was selected based on its migration to JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform to enhance the experience of its user base. Its migration from another technology [BEA's Weblogic] to JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform increased the company's user portal's speed, reliability and ease-of-?use. The new solution also allowed the company's developers to create new, user-?requested applications at a much faster rate, compiling programs in under one second as opposed to five minutes previously.
There's a lot more data behind the submission that Red Hat will be announcing, but which I'm not at liberty to share. Let's just say that JBoss has given Daiwa flexibility to solve its own business problems, flexibility that BEA refused to give its customers as a proprietary software company, flexibility that is keeping millions of dollars in Daiwa's bank account.
Amazing what customers will do if you let them.
Update: I neglected to actually mention who the respective winners are. By category they are:
- Emerging Technology: Big Lots (www.biglots.com). Using JBoss Enterprise Platform and JBoss Seam to develop and implement a next-generation store inventory management system.
- Joint JBoss Enterprise/Red Hat Enterprise Linux: CompuCredit. Using JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to construct an XML Gateway to serve as the company's main real-time transaction hub.
- Migration: Sakonnet Technology. Migrated its main application, Xenon?, to JBoss Application Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
- User Experience: Daiwa Securities America. See above.
- Business Process Automation: SK Telecom. Using JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss jBPM to build and streamline its wireless data portal (WDP).
- Ecosystem: Rivet Logic. Selected for its use of Alfresco's open-source content management platform in support of the upgrade of Kaplan's online presence from a legacy system to a JBoss-centric solution. Rivet Logic employed JBoss Seam (and Facelets), JBoss Application Server, Hibernate and jBPM to create Kaplan's newly updated www.kaptest.com site.
- Return on Investment: Alintec. Achieved a high return on investment (ROI) it achieved after the implementation of multiple JBoss technologies within its Internet-based Library Management System (LMS) for the Province of Bergamo.
- Service Oriented Architecture: Vivat. Moved US Trust's main revenue stream, the Client Fee Calculator, from an antiquated legacy system to a new SOA system built on JBoss technologies, including JBoss Rules and JBoss Application Server.
Very, very cool stuff.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
