ARTICLE POSTED November 4th, 2002

First annual SNW Best Practices in Storage awards presented

The SNW "Best Practices in Storage" Awards Program is the newest addition to Storage Networking World. The first winners were picked in five categories at this year's Fall SNW Show, held in Orlando.

Thirty finalists were chosen from an initial response of over 500 interested IT user companies and organizations. Participants were derived from a call for nominations broadcast to all SNIA member companies and Computerworld subscribers responsible for storage solutions in their enterprises.

Nominations were submitted in a classic case study format, which included a profile of the company and its IT department, as well as key equipment and application deployment via an online process hosted by Computerworld.

A panel of distinguished judges scrutinized the submissions from the finalists to select two winners in each of the five categories (see below). One honorable mention was also designated in each of the categories.

Program judges
The program judges included:

• Wayne Adams - SNIA board of directors and SNW board of directors.
• Ray Dunn - SNIA Supported Solutions and Storage Management Initiative Forums.
• Maryfran Johnson - Computerworld editor in chief.
• Leo Leger - Computerworld Vice President and SNW board of directors.
• Rick Bauer - The Hill School CIO and SNIA chairman, Customer Executive Council.
• Richard Villars - IDC Vice President, Storage Systems Research.

Program judges' evaluation criteria
Judges evaluated and ranked the finalists in each category according to their substantiated storage solution attributes and achievements using the following set of criteria:

• Financial return and measurable payback (returns on investment, assets, resources) through created/protected revenue opportunities or cost savings.
• Strategic importance to the business.
• Substantive customer impact (service, retention, acquisition).
• Positive impact on other business/organization units.
• Coverage of interoperability issues and heterogeneous platform integration challenges.
• Realization of strategic advantage to the business/organization while anticipating and accommodating the deployment of future storage solution initiatives.
• Support and encouragement for data, information and application sharing/access efficiently and conveniently between departments.
• Coverage of challenges relating to data, information and application security, recovery and business continuity.

Award-winning profiles to be featured in special Computerworld supplement
Each of the winning companies and its unique storage solution will be profiled in a Computerworld custom-published supplement. Highlights of the case study will be featured, identifying the key best practices deployed.

Five program categories
The five program categories were Systems Implementation, Storage Reliability, Data Recovery, Financial Return and Innovation and Promise.

Systems Implementation
This category recognizes the successful design, implementation and management of an interoperable environment. It further demonstrates the ability to source from multiple vendors and to maintain a heterogeneous storage network.

Storage Reliability
This category acknowledges implementation strategies and programs to insure highly available information and data access. Examples of business continuance initiatives (backup deployment, staging, performance testing/projections, etc.) are key considerations.

Data Recovery
This category is based on a case study describing the successful recovery from an actual significant network and data access disruption. Summary analyses of restart/recovery factors (backup deployment, time to restart and restore, data loss, etc.) are essential.

Financial Return
Areas to be evaluated in this category include achievements in measurable returns on investment, assets and resources through the use of a storage network. Other criteria include total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits and other accomplishments.

Innovation and Promise
Key criteria in this category include the successful pioneering of leading- or bleeding-edge storage networking technology. The ability to overcome early adoption obstacles and to resolve problems (in-house or via unique vendor/integrator/other user partnerships, etc.) is assessed. Storage solutions with near-term promise or upgrade in any of the above categories may be presented. All "miscellaneous other" type cases fit into this category.

SNW "Best Practices in Storage" award winners and honorable mention designees
The winners are listed below (including recognition of the individual who prepared and submitted case studies):

Systems Implementation
Sprint, Overland Park, KA (Cyndee Groves)
State of New Jersey Office of Information Technology, Trenton, NJ (Bruce Rosser)
Honorable mention: Harrah's Entertainment, Memphis, TN (David Richter)

Storage Reliability
Maimonides Medical Center of Brooklyn, NY (Mark Moroses)
Nationwide Insurance, Columbus, OH (Michael Carrel)
Honorable mention: University of Buffalo (SUNY), Buffalo, NY (Carole Petro)

Data Recovery
Corner Bank, Lugano, Switzerland (Charles Inches)
Kmart Corp., Troy, MI (Craig Viney)
Honorable mention: Norfolk Southern, Norfolk, VA (Lajuana Earwood)

Financial Return
Digital River, Inc., Eden Prairie, MN (Marty Boos)
IndyMac Bank, Pasadena, CA (Hilary Swanson)
Honorable mention: CAN Trust, Costa Mesa, CA (John Evans)

Innovation and Promise
Acxiom Corp. of Conway, AK (Greg Cherry)
J.D. Edwards, Denver, CO (Stacie Landgren)
Honorable mention: NSCA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), Champagne, IL (Michelle Butler)

The awards were handed out at a ceremony sponsored by Hewlett-Packard and held before the SNW gala dinner October 29 at the Renaissance Orlando Resort.

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