VMware Announces the Virtual Vanguard Awards

VMware stunned many of us when they announced the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge, along with its $100,000 prize. The challenge made the VM community stop what they were doing, and focus their creative energy on coming up with the next great virtual appliance. Now that the challenge is over and behind us, VMware has moved forward, this time announcing an award for creativity and innovation rather than making another challenge.

VMware knows that individuals and companies have been leveraging the virtualization technology to create innovative environments and applications to improve IT performance, minimize downtime, and reduce the cost and complexity of delivering enterprise services. To honor these customers, VMware is announcing the Virtual Vanguard Awards Program.

The award program is open to all VMware customers who purchase virtualization products for use in their own organization. All entries for the program must be submitted by a VMware customer. And they must be received by 12:00 p.m. PST on Friday, October 6, 2006. Participants should submit their entries by selecting one of the award categories below.

• Best Overall Return on Investment (ROI) and Operational Benefits
• Most Comprehensive VMware Infrastructure
• Most Mission-Critical Application in Production
• The Vanguard Award for Innovation

The entries will be reviewed by judges including VMware engineers and executives, industry analysts and select VMware customers. Winners will then be notified by 5:00 p.m. PST on Monday, October 23, 2006 via email.

The awards ceremony will be held at VMworld 2006 in Los Angeles, California on November 7, 2006. Award winners will receive a free attendee pass to the show where they will be recognized and collect their award.