Itanium Solutions Alliance Secures Business and Technology Leaders to Judge 2009 Innovation Awards

PORTLAND, Ore., June 2 -- The Itanium Solutions Alliance announced today it has secured eleven high-profile industry leaders to judge its third-annual Innovation Awards competition. The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards were designed to recognize and reward end users and developers for outstanding use of Intel(R) Itanium-based servers in their applications. Individuals or organizations with Itanium-based solutions may enter, at no cost, in one of four categories: Mission-Critical Data, Data Center Modernization, Computationally Intensive Applications, and Humanitarian Impact.

"We are very pleased to have secured such a strong caliber of judges for this year's Innovation Awards," said Joan Jacobs, president and executive director of the Itanium Solutions Alliance. "The fact that this year's entries will be carefully evaluated and the winners selected by this distinguished panel of industry leaders adds another dimension of credibility to this prestigious awards competition."

  The Itanium Solutions Alliance Innovation Awards judges for 2009 are:
  --  Joe B. Alexander, strategy and technology consultant; educator
  --  Ken Cayton, president, Systematic Market Analysis
  --  Jon Erickson, editor in chief, Dr. Dobb's
  --  Sverre Jarp, chief technology officer, CERN openlab
  --  Dr. Rinaldo Jose, president and co-founder, Lakeway Technologies
  --  George McQuilken, co-founder, eCoast Angels Investment Network
  --  Michelle (Mickey) Pierce, senior product manager, Mainframe Migration
      Alliance, Microsoft
  --  Dr. Andrew Razeghi, lecturer, Kellogg School of Management,
      Northwestern University
  --  Clay Ryder, president, The Sageza Group
  --  Dr. Mark K. Smith, executive director, Universal Parallel Computing
      Research Center, and managing director, Gelato Federation

  --  Michael Vizard, director of strategic content, Ziff-Davis Enterprise

The judges will evaluate submissions based on a number of criteria such as difficulty of challenge, results produced, and originality, and their scores will be tabulated to select each category winner. Winners will be honored at a special event during the Intel Developer Forum, September 23rd, 2009 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the winning submission in the Humanitarian Impact category will receive a $50,000 cash award.

The deadline for entries is Wednesday, June 3, 2009. You can submit your online application here. If you have any questions about the form or any trouble submitting your application electronically, please email awards at itaniumsolutions.com.

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/

(C) 2009. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.