2002 Technology of the Year Award winners

Which solutions represent the best implementations of our technologies of the year? Among all the products we tested in 2002, these were the standouts in their technology category.

Award Winner, Wireless networks: NetMotion Mobility 3.5

NetMotion Wireless provides unique flexibility to its enterprise-class wireless security solution. It supports secure communications with any wireless connection regardless of type, while also supporting global roaming over a wide variety of connection speeds and media.

Test Center Review: NetMotion Mobility 3.5: The seamless edge

Test Center Analysis: Countering the greatest fears

Award Winner, XML Web services: Microsoft Office 11

Part of XML’s mission has always been to manage the data that lives in ordinary business documents. The forthcoming Office 11, with its deep support for XML Schema, will help make that vision real.

Test Center Analysis: XML for the rest of us

Test Center Review: Microsoft Office 11 Beta: Cornering the office

Test Center Analysis: Open for business

Award Winner, Apple platform: Mac OS X 10.2

Apple’s Mac OS X, patched last year to Version 10.2, combines much of what’s best about Mac OS, Windows, and Unix. Its open-source roots lend it immediate respectability and encourage the porting of existing Unix software. OS X’s quick, silky-smooth GUI and standard apps on the client side, and its inclusive collection of services in the Server edition, will give Windows the best fight it’s ever had.

Test Center: Mac marks the enterprise

Point/Counterpoint: Too big for its niches

Award Winners, Publish/subscribe technologies: Kenamea Application Network 1.2 and KnowNow Event Router 1.5

Publish/subscribe is one of the messaging patterns that powers enterprise middleware. Both Kenamea and KnowNow have done innovative work to bring pub/sub to the desktop, and to simplify the development of message-driven enterprise apps.

Test Center Review: Kenamea Application Network 1.2: Reliable messaging

Test Center Review: KnowNow Event Router 1.5: Flexible messaging

Test Center Analysis: Web services applications

Test Center: Reliable Web services

Award Winner, Digital Rights Management: Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series

Microsoft’s Windows Media 9 Series software gives users glamorous player interfaces, cross-device compatibility, and high-quality video encoding, but its killer feature is DRM. If you’re in the business of selling content or keeping secrets, the end-to-end control of the Windows Media 9 Series players and server (built into Windows 2003 Server) ensures that only those who pay can watch or listen.

Test Center Review: Windows .Net Enterprise Server, RC1: Serving up .Net

Test Center: Inside Corona

Award Winner, Business intelligence/business performance management: Brio Metrics Builder 7.0

Brio Metrics Builder offers business analysts a powerful platform not only for analyzing and quantifying business trends, but also for creating new performance monitoring tools from company data and distributing them to managers and users across the enterprise.

Test Center Review: Brio Metrics Builder 7.0: Boosting visibility

Award Winner, 10 Gigabit Ethernet: Smartbits TeraMetrics 10 Gigabit Ethernet Test Module

Spirent Communications’ 10 Gigabit Ethernet Test Module provides the vital proof that other 10 Gigabit networking products meet required specifications. Without such test platforms, development of any product to meet such a standard would be impossible.

Award Winner, Open-source software: Apache Axis

The Internet owes much of its success to a core infrastructure that is free and commoditized. The Apache Axis project’s gift to the world is a powerful, high-performance, open-source Web services stack.

Test Center Analysis: A striking balance

Test Center: A Flash-forward look

Test Center: Reliable Web services

Award Winner, Fibre Channel: McData Sphereon 4500 Fabric Switch

With its competitive price and easy field upgrade from 8 to 24 ports, McData’s Sphereon 4500 is an ideal choice for companies still growing their Fibre Channel SANs. The Sphereon minimizes service interruptions and offers a forgiving solution for unforeseeable capacity bursts.

Test Center Review: McData Sphereon 4500 Fabric Switch: Grow with the flow

Award Winner, Hyperthreading CPUs: Intel Xeon DP

Intel’s Hyper-Threading Xeon and Pentium 4 processors provide a significant boost in processing power by more efficiently executing multithreaded operating systems and applications. By appearing to the operating system as two processors, each hyperthreading CPU can increase its throughput, delivering a performance boost of 25 percent or more.

Test Center Analysis: Seeing double?

Test Center Analysis: Reaching for gold

Test Center Analysis: SMT goes mainstream