Itanium Solutions Alliance Launches Third Annual Innovation Awards Program

Now accepting entries showcasing excellence in mission-critical computing and humanitarian efforts

PORTLAND, Feb. 26 -- The Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance is pleased to announce that the call for entries is now open for the 2009 Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards. In their third year, the Innovation Awards honor unique and impactful work that relies on Intel(R) Itanium-based solutions. The Alliance will accept entries through May 13, 2009, and winners will be revealed at an exclusive event during the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

"In these challenging times, it's an honor to host an industry awards program that turns the spotlight on developers, data centers and IT organizations and recognizes the dedicated professionals who work relentlessly to break new ground in computing," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Alliance. "We hope the growing community of Itanium users will again seize on this opportunity to share with the industry the compelling and often world-changing initiatives they've brought to life on Itanium-based systems."

The Alliance hosts the annual Innovation Awards in alignment with the organization's mission to accelerate the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium(R)-based solutions. Developers, enterprises, small and mid-sized businesses, and research institutions are all strongly encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to earn highly visible recognition for their work on Itanium-based systems.

This year, four categories will recognize unique and impactful work using Itanium-based solutions in the areas of Mission-Critical Data, Data Center Modernization, Computationally Intensive Applications and Humanitarian Impact. Winners will be chosen by an independent panel of judges selected for their leadership in innovation and relevant category expertise. The winner in the Humanitarian Impact category - which comes with a $50,000 prize for continuing efforts in their chosen endeavor - will be announced in July, and other category winners are to be revealed live at the Innovation Awards Celebration on September 23, 2009, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Entrants are welcome to submit to one or more categories, but are required to provide a unique application of an Itanium-based solution for each entry:

  --  The Mission-Critical Data category recognizes the successful
      implementation of a database or data warehousing solution that
      achieves outstanding results;
  --  Organizations making or leading the transition from a mainframe-based
      infrastructure to one that takes advantage of Itanium's open
      architecture framework will be considered for the Data Center
      Modernization category;
  --  The Computationally Intensive Applications category focuses on
      organizations who have applied their systems to tackle massive
      workloads which demand consistently high performance and scalable
      shared resources;
  --  The Humanitarian Impact category award, and $50,000 cash prize to
      support the winning organization's work, will be bestowed upon the
      most innovative implementation of applications running on
      Itanium-based systems where the systems demonstrate a positive impact
      for humanity through research, social improvements or other
      humanitarian efforts. Examples of eligible uses include, but are not
      limited to, biosciences research, natural disaster modeling and
      prediction, and resource management.

All entries will be evaluated on a scorecard-based system that considers key factors in the solution's deployment, and finalists will be notified of their status in May. The program's 2008 winners were the University of Houston Bioinformatics Research Lab from Houston, Texas; S7 Software Solutions, headquartered in Bangalore, India; and Protegesoft Pte. Ltd. of Singapore.

  Key facts
  --  Entries open: February 26, 2009
  --  Entries close: May 13, 2009
  --  Humanitarian Impact category winner awarded: July 2009
  --  Award event: Sept. 23, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
  --  Follow the awards and submit entries at
      http://www.itaniumsolutions.org/itanium_innovation_awards/ and at the
      Itanium Solutions Alliance blog: http://blog.itaniumsolutions.org/


  About the Itanium Solutions Alliance

The Itanium(R) Solutions Alliance is a global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium(R)-based solutions. Formed in September 2005, the Alliance comprises some of the most influential companies in the computing industry with a shared, strategic commitment to delivering mission-critical computing solutions based on the Intel(R) Itanium(R) architecture. http://www.itaniumsolutions.org/.

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