rPath, provider of the first platform for creating and maintaining software and virtual appliances, today announced it has won the 2007 SoftwareCEO/CompTIA Software Innovation Award for Most Innovative Software Idea. Award winners were honored at the Computing Technology Industry Association’s (CompTIA) Annual Breakaway Conference on August 1 in Las Vegas.

CompTIA is the leading trade association for the world's information technology industry. The inaugural SoftwareCEO/CompTIA Software Innovation Awards recognize innovative software products and new business models in eight different categories. Award winners were selected by an esteemed panel of software industry executives, and judged on scope, impact and novelty. Judges examined the business problem or opportunity the software innovation addresses, the practical results of the innovation and the degree to which the product or company broke with traditional ideas or processes.

“The software industry is driven by its ability to develop innovative ideas; and to turn those innovations into products that deliver real business value to customers. rPath’s software appliance approach allows application providers to expand into new markets, open new channels of distribution and reduce development costs,” stated David Sommer, vice president, e-business and software solutions, CompTIA. “Like all the winners, rPath epitomizes the software industry’s creativity and innovative spirit.”

A software appliance is an application combined with a streamlined operating system, offered in a format that runs on industry standard hardware or in virtualized environments. rPath’s rBuilder, the engine for creating and maintaining software appliances, combines applications with system software and then delivers the resulting software appliance to the end customer. The rPath Appliance Platform provides a web-based interface for configuring and maintaining software appliances, performing key tasks such as update management, application configuration, license management, and backup.

“Innovation is at the core of rPath and our technology,” stated Billy Marshall, CEO and founder of rPath. “This award is continued validation that the software appliance model will have a significant impact on the software industry.”

A list of all the SoftwareCEO/CompTIA Software Innovation Award winners can be found at: http://www.softwareceo.com/awards/innovation_winners.php.