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A complete list of winners of the Microsoft
Exchange Conference 2001 Award winners:
Category: Customer
Winner: Genisys Consulting, Inc. for GenASSIST
Category: Partner
Winner: Ascendant TSG for K-Advisor
Category: Developer Tool
Winner: IT Factory for Development Center for Exchange
Category: Infrastructure
Winner: IXOS Software and Hewlett-Packard Company for IXOS-eCONserver
with HP Archival Storage
Category: Management
Winner: NetIQ Corporation for AppAnalyzer
Category: Mobile
Winner: Aspire Technologies (Shenzhen) Ltd. for Aspire Unified
Messaging System
Category: Productivity
Winner: Acrodex for CHRIS
Category: Vertical
Winner: eOptimize Inc. for About:Time for Healthcare>
Category: Workflow
Winner: Bay Technologies for CASA Service Center Workflow
Solution
Category: XML
Winner: Insuretech, Inc. for InsureTech Pizzazz!
Microsoft Exchange 2000 is making the dream
of seamless, Web-based collaboration come true for businesses,
according to independent software developers whose products
were honored here Sunday night at the Microsoft Exchange Conference
(MEC) 2001
"We’re at the beginning of the
next age of collaborating -- the age of contextual collaboration,"
says Bill Pugh, CEO of Ascendant TSG. The Houston company
began using Microsoft Exchange 2000 as its collaboration platform
last year because it offered what competing platforms don't
-- integration of the computer desktop, email and documents.
This allowed Ascendant to build K-Advisor,
which uses Exchange’s workflow features and other Microsoft
technologies to create a virtual place where all the e-mail
discussions, decisions and documents related to a big project
reside. Individuals make their date-stamped contributions
to the project on the virtual site -- rather than having to
send multiple physical or electronic copies every time something
changes.
"It helps you get your arms around
the unstructured aspects of business -- which otherwise can
make things fall through the cracks, make you lose documents,
so you have to redo things over and over," Pugh says.
"It links everybody involved in the process, not just
the internal groups but the external advisers and customers,
with the security levels you need for each of them."
K-Advisor’s first use was to help
businesses track mergers and acquisitions, but it is applicable
to any complex task, Pugh said. For instance, Texas Tech University
is using K-Advisor in applying for research grants, and health
systems are using it to track compliance with new rules on
privacy of patient records.
Ascendant's work on K Advisor was among
30 finalists for the Microsoft Exchange Conference Awards
2001, presented as part of the first day of the MEC 2001 conference.
The firm was nominated in two categories -- Best Use of Workflow
and Best Solution by a Partner - and won the award for Best
Solution by a Partner.
Earnie Glazener, product manager in the
.NET Enterprise Server Division at Microsoft, says that MEC
Awards entries increased 66 percent this year. "People
are starting to see the value of Exchange 2000, and they’re
starting to look for solutions based on it," Glazener
says.
Another winner in the awards competition
used Microsoft Exchange 2000 to improve collaboration and
the effectiveness of its own sales and fulfillment process.
GenASSIST, built by Genisys Consulting Inc., of Elk Grove,
Ill., won the Best Solution by a Customer category.
"Previously, we had a hard time managing
and sharing our contact information, managing the performance
of our sales people, and even getting project proposals back
to clients who requested them," says Jamie Story, director
of sales and marketing for Genisys.
GenASSIST simplifies such tasks via templates
and organizes them via a visual dashboard, customized to each
worker. It also uses Microsoft Office XP Smart Tags to retrieve
information from legacy computers to complete a project proposal,
says Rick Parham, director of consulting services for Genisys.
Once a proposal is written, it progresses through the company’s
processes without actually moving from Exchange.
"Everyone can sign off on it, and the
system also notifies people we’re going to have to put
a team together. When the final approval comes back, the application
creates a folder on the dashboard where we share all the information,"
Story says. "We always know where in the process everything
is. Then, when a client accepts our proposal, we have all
the information already collected. We just press a button
on the project page, it routes the Word document to management
for final approval, and when management approves, it sends
a copy to accounting for billing. Nothing has to be retyped."
GenASSIST uses Exchange 2000, Office XP,
the Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating system,
Microsoft Windows CE, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Windows CE
Edition and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001. The Microsoft
components tie together so well that GenASSIST was created
in one-week increments as staff was available, Parham says.
"We went from whiteboard to end production in less than
seven weeks.".
The product developed by a third honoree
at the MEC Awards ceremony offers another way to develop Exchange
2000 applications.
IT Factory Development Center for Microsoft
was the winner in the Best Developer Tool category. A snap-in
for Microsoft Visual InterDev (the development tool for Web-based
applications), IT Factory Development Center allows faster
development of applications based on Exchange 2000.
"It doesn’t require a very big
learning curve," says Robert Ginsburg, CTO of Boston-based
IT Factory. "It’s one of those tools that, once
people use it, they realize there’s just no other way
to do it."
For instance, properties can be dragged-and-dropped
on ASP/HTML pages to generate code. Wizards in the software
can create a Web-application structure in less than a minute.
The ITF system also allows any data object to be enabled for
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol, a protocol for XML, the
eXtensible Markup Language) with a single click, which will
be important in the transition to new Microsoft .NET systems,
Ginsburg says.
Indeed, the MEC Awards judges noted this
in their comments on the IT Factory product. "This tool
provides familiar development features while adding Web services
capability," they wrote. "Developers working toward
XML Web services integration into applications will benefit
from the future-oriented functionality in this product."
The MEC 2001 Awards were presented by Malcolm
Pearson, general manager, Exchange Server at Microsoft. Paul
Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's .NET Enterprise
Server Division, acknowledged all 10 winners during the opening
keynote at MEC 2001, where business executives, software developers
and systems administrators are meeting to learn more about
Exchange 2000 and other Microsoft products. The meeting continues
through Thursday at Orlando's Orange County Convention Center.
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