Best Database
Administration Product
SQL diagnostic manager
In the Database Administration
category, our Best of TechEd
award goes to Idera’s SQL diagnostic
manager. SQL diagnostic
manager lets you monitor SQL Server performance
as well as diagnose and analyze
performance problems. The product can
record comprehensive performance histories
of monitored servers, which enables the
administrator to see trending and analysis of
previous system problems. It also monitors
more than 230 performance criteria, all of
which you can organize, view, and analyze
via a powerful command console. Combine
that plethora of robust features with a
speedy, agentless installation process, and
SQL diagnostic manager makes database
administration easier than ever.
—Michael Otey
Best Productivity and
Collaboration Product
Colligo Contributor Pro for SharePoint
Giving users access to company
information on the road is
essential. Colligo Contributor Pro lets users access and edit SharePoint
content offline as well as online. A handy Colligo
add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook also
makes publishing SharePoint content as easy
as dragging and dropping an email from one
screen location to another. Colligo Contributor
Pro is easy to deploy, with a 5MB client, no
required server installation, and full support
for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0,
WSS 2.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007, and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
2003, as well as integration with Outlook 2007
and 2003. This product also lets SharePoint
administrators configure and set user permissions,
support SharePoint clients in disparate
physical locations, and even develop custom
SharePoint clients by using the Colligo Contributor
Software Development Kit. For all
these reasons—and more—Colligo Contributor
Pro is our winner in the Productivity and
Collaboration category.
—Jeff James
Best Security Product
ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange
The winner in the security category
is Trend Micro’s ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange.
ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange
provides comprehensive email security,
including antivirus, antispyware, and zeroday
virus protection. In addition, ScanMail
can stop spam and phishing threats and
block inappropriate Web content. A recent
survey by Osterman Research (commissioned
by Trend Micro) interviewed more
than a hundred IT professionals about the
costs they incurred when deploying and
managing messaging security solutions
designed for Exchange environments. The
survey revealed that ScanMail for Exchange
provided the lowest cost of ownership for
organizations with fewer than 2,500 seats.
Combine that low cost of ownership with
ScanMail’s impressive feature set, and IT
pros looking for email security would be well
advised to give this product a look.
—Michael Otey
Best Virtualization Product
VMware Infrastructure 3
The winner in our Virtualization
category is VMware Infrastructure
3 (VI3). Virtualization
is taking the IT world by storm,
and VMware has been driving that change.
Although vendors such as Citrix and Microsoft
are hoping to chip away at its market-leading
position, VMware is currently in the driver’s
seat. The VI3 suite is available in a variety of
configurations and includes several products
that can make your virtualized infrastructure
more efficient. VMware Consolidated Backup,
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler,
and VMware High Availability are just a few
of the VI3 suite components that can drive
improvements to efficiency and utilization
while holding down costs. An optimized virtualization
infrastructure lets IT pros dynamically
provision and migrate resources through
the enterprise to match changing business
demands, and no virtualization product suite
does that better than VI3.
—Jeff James
Best Systems
Management and
Operations Product
Athena
Athena by Odyssey Software is
a management solution for
Windows-based mobile devices
that integrates into the Microsoft
System Center management interface. With
Athena, you can detect and catalog deployed
mobile devices, monitor the status of connected
assets, and deploy software updates
and applications. Available feature packs
let you incorporate additional features, such
as asset reporting, software provisioning,
security, and improved support, into your
Athena environment. The product integrates
with Microsoft Systems Management Server
2003 and System Center Configuration Manager
2007 to help IT pros more easily supervise,
manage, monitor, and secure Windows
Mobile infrastructures.
—Amy Eisenberg
Breakthrough Product
PowerGUI
With millions of downloads
and robust support for
many Microsoft applications,
Windows PowerShell is one of the
most popular tools to hit the IT industry in
years. Its powerful scripting features give
IT pros new ways to manage the IT infrastructure.
And no product makes Power-
Shell easier to use than Quest Software’s PowerGUI, a scripting and command shell
platform. If you’re an IT pro who isn’t fond
of scripting, or a VBScript expert who’s
not eager to learn a new scripting system,
PowerGUI could be the tool you’ve been
waiting for. PowerGUI provides point-andclick
access to most PowerShell features and
can convert VBScript expressions into their
PowerShell equivalents. Combined with
the VMware Infrastructure Toolkit and a
few other tools, PowerGUI can also be used
with PowerShell to manipulate VMware ESX
Server virtual machines. All these features
(and more) make PowerGUI the winner of
our Breakthrough Product award.
—Jeff James
Attendees’ Pick
Replicator for SharePoint
Unlike all the other award
categories at TechEd, the
Attendees’ Pick award is chosen
by TechEd attendees who voted for their
favorite products. Dozens of products were
chosen by popular vote, and the winner—
Syntergy’s Replicator for SharePoint—garnered
the most votes to emerge victorious.
Replicator is designed to help IT pros manage
large SharePoint environments and is
particularly helpful with the task of keeping geographically diverse SharePoint installations
and content synchronized and compatible.
Replicator can create links between
SharePoint servers, which can then use
bidirectional data transfer to keep content
and configuration consistent between
them. Replicator can also keep users and
group data synchronized between servers,
replicate permissions, and perform dozens
of other helpful SharePoint management
tasks to relieve overworked administrators.
—Jeff James
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