Business Productivity Showcased in New Honors at Microsoft Tech·Ed Conference

NEW ORLEANS, April 10, 2002 -- In a belt-tightening business climate, companies don't just purchase products. They seek out solutions that make employees more productive and create business value for their organizations, says Kurt DelBene, corporate vice president for Authoring and Collaboration Services at Microsoft.

In connection with this week's Tech·Ed 2002 conference for corporate developers and IT professionals, Microsoft hosted its first annual Tech·Ed Business Productivity Awards, designed to highlight the best partner and customer solutions that incorporate Microsoft products into their quest to streamline business processes. The focus of the contest was on Microsoft Exchange 2000, SharePoint Portal Server and Office XP.

With more than 100 million licenses sold, Exchange is a messaging and collaboration platform that provides e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging and conferencing. Office XP, the leading productivity suite, is intended to help people complete everyday office tasks, such as word processing, e-mail presentations and data management and analysis. SharePoint Portal Server is an enterprise portal solution, designed to allow companies to easily find, share and publish information.

"We decided this concentration would give us an intriguing intersection of solutions that improve office productivity," DelBene explains. "We know that productivity, return on investment and overall business value are becoming increasingly important to companies when they look to implement new technologies."

Nearly 200 companies submitted approximately 500 entries, a response DelBene described as "almost overwhelming, but very gratifying." The following companies walked away from Tech·Ed 2002 today as winners:

• Best Use of Business Intelligence Technologies - KSolutions, Inc. for K. Central Business Intelligence Dashboard
• Best Innovative Group Productivity Solution -- Genisys Consulting, Inc. for Genisys Advanced System for Sales Information and Service Tracking (GenASSIST)
• Best Cross-product Integration - Navantis Inc. for Trade-Settlement Inc.
• Best Integration of the Office Product Family - Plural Inc. for Business Development Productivity Solution
• Best Solution for a Not-for-Profit Organization -- Navantis, Inc. for CanadaHelps.org
• Best SharePoint Portal Solution -- H&R Block Financial Advisors & G.A. Sullivan Advisor Workspace Team for Advisor Workspace
• Most Innovative Use of Smart Tags - Keylogix for ActiveDocs, Document Automation for Microsoft Office
• Best Vertical-Focused Solution - TYMETRIX for CynOps Collaborative Networks with Matter Management for the Corporate Legal Community
• Best Use of Workflow - Aimware for TeamCentral
• Most Innovative Use of XML -- Green Jar Solutions (Pty) Ltd for Green Jar Broker Research Solution
• Best Overall Solution -- Genisys Consulting, Inc. for Genisys Advanced System for Sales Information and Service Tracking (GenASSIST).

"So many good solutions were submitted," DelBene says. "We had entries coming in from all over the world." Solutions submitted ranged from a portal designed for the Croatian government to an Israeli company's time-saving tool for converting structured data to XML. Other unique solutions came from Ireland, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Judges also were impressed with domestic entries, among them a portal designed to meet the needs of the new homeland security industry.

"As Bill Gates announced in January, one of the main focuses on our company will be Trustworthy Computing, which includes improving the security of software and corporate data," DelBene says. "It was nice to see Internosis use many Microsoft products in their Homeland Security System, which shows that our software is helping to improve the security of electronic data, as well as contributing to our nation's physical security."

Microsoft representatives similarly singled out KeyLogix, a younger company picking up newer technologies and improvising with them.

"In our marketing, we talk a lot about the productivity value of technologies, like custom smart tags, though companies generally have to do some development work to take advantage of them," DelBene says. "KeyLogix has integrated this technology using a total solution that lets companies get the full benefit of smart tags by simply using a friendly user interface."

In addition to DelBene, the contest judges were: John Taschek, Labs director at eWeek; Malcolm Pearson, general manager for Exchange Server at Microsoft; Kevin Weeks, editor-in-chief of Microsoft Office Solutions magazine, and Ian Campbell, senior vice president of Nucleus Research.