Every year, editors at TechTarget's portfolio of Windows sites, together with a panel of independent judges, scour the market for the year's most innovative products delivering value to Windows IT shops. In 2005, some of the biggest trends in Windows software involved delivering greater security across all Windows platforms and the ongoing desire for more platform power and performance. These are just some of the areas where we found vendors delivering some of their greatest innovations.
Rating products that bring security, power and performance to Windows shops is the core of our Windows Products of the Year initiative at TechTarget. This year, we expanded the categories to address the hardware and database technologies we now cover as part of our growing Windows network portfolio.
We solicited nominations from vendors and recruited a panel of independent industry experts as our judges. In all, we reviewed 175 products that were introduced or significantly upgraded between Sept. 30, 2004, and Oct. 1, 2005.
Read on to discover the winners of the gold, silver and bronze awards for Products of the Year 2005! Our judges evaluated each of the products and gave their recommendations based on the following criteria: innovation, performance, ease of integration into environment, ease of use and manageability, functionality, support and value.
Category: Desktop Management
Gold Winner
Winternals Software
Recovery Manager 2.0
Silver Winner
Macrovision
FLEXnet AdminStudio 7
Bronze Winner
ScriptLogic Corporation
Desktop Authority 6.5
Category: Storage Management Software
Gold Winner
Storactive
LiveBackup 2.9
Silver Winner
Neverfail Group
High Availability Solution
Bronze Winner
Symantec Corporation
VERITAS Storage Foundation High Availability for Windows 4.3
Category: Blade Servers
Gold Winner
IBM Corporation
BladeCenter HS20
Silver Winner
Dell Inc.
PowerEdge 1855
Bronze Winner
Hewlett-Packard Company
ProLiant BL45 BladeSystem.
Category: Storage Hardware
Gold Winner
Alacritech Inc.
Alacritech SES2102ET
Silver Winner
EqualLogic
PS300E Storage Array
Bronze Winner
EMC Corporation
EMC Centera Content-Addressed-Storage for Mid-Size Enterprises
Category: Systems Management
Gold Winner
Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Operations Manager 2005
Silver Winner
Winternals Software
Administrator's Pak 5.0
Bronze Winner
Hewlett-Packard Company
HP OpenView Operations for Windows 7.5 Limited Edition
Category: Messaging: Archiving and Compliance
Gold Winner
ZANTAZ Inc.
ZANTAZ EAS (Enterprise Archive Solution) 4.2
Silver Winner
Fortiva Inc.
Fortiva Suite
Bronze Winner
Zip Lip, Inc.
ZipLip Unified Email Archive Suite, Version 5
Category: Messaging: Security
Gold Winner
CipherTrust, Inc.
CipherTrust IronMail version 6.0
Silver Winner
The MX Logic Inc.
The MX Logic Email Defense Service
Bronze Winner
Tumbleweed Communications
Mailgate Email Firewall 6.2
Category: Messaging: Backup and Recovery
Gold Winner
Mimosa Systems
Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange V 1.0
Silver Winner
CommVault
CommVault QiNetix 5.9
Bronze Winner
EMC Corporation
EMC NetWorker Module for Microsoft Exchange Server
Category: Active Directory
Gold Winner
NetPro
ChangeAuditor for Active Directory – v2.6
Silver Winner
NetPro
RestoreADmin – v1.0
Bronze Winner
Special Operations Software
Specops Deploy 3.0
Category: Group Policy Management
Gold Winner
Quest Software
Group Policy Extensions for Desktops 2.0
Silver Winner
FullArmor
IntelliPolicy for Clients 1.5
Bronze Winner
DesktopStandard Corporation
GPOVault 2.1
Category: Antispyware
Gold Winner
Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Barracuda Spyware Firewall
Silver Winner
Webroot Software Inc.
Spy Sweeper Enterprise 2.5
Bronze Winner
SunBelt Software
CounterSpy Enterprise Version 1.5
Category: Patch Management
Gold Winner
Ecora Software Corporation
Patch Manager 4.0
Silver Winner
Shavlik Technologies, LLC
Shavlik NetChk Protect 5.5
Bronze Winner
St. Bernard Software
UpdateEXPERT Premium
Category: Testing and Auditing
Gold Winner
GFI Software Ltd.
GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner v6
Silver Winner
SPI Dynamics
WebInspect 5.5
Bronze Winner
Safend
Safend Protector
Category: General Database Utilities
Gold Winner
Quest Software
LiteSpeed for SQL Server version 4.0
Silver Winner
Atadore
PromptSQL 1.0
Bronze Winner
Red Gate Software
SQL Backup & Rescue Bundle
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