That’s right, we are headed into
another exciting award season where the public can weigh in on the major
IT challenges of today and cast their votes for the visionary leaders
with the most innovative solutions for tomorrow. No, I’m not talking
about the Golden Globes or Grammys; I’m talking about the Citrix
Innovation Award to be presented in May at CitrixSynergy in San Francisco!
I’ve
always said that Citrix has some of the most innovative customers
around, industry leaders that would rival any political candidate’s
foresight, savvy and innovative thinking. That is why we celebrate the
year’s best examples of business IT solutions in action with our Citrix
Innovation Award. We take innovation quite seriously at Citrix, whether
that’s in our own technology developments, our Startup Accelerator
investments, or in recognizing great achievement by our customers and
partners.
This year is no different! The three finalists for this
prestigious award have all displayed great vision in using Citrix
solutions to drive innovation and IT simplicity across their
organizations. They also represent the diversity of the Citrix global
customer base in that these companies come from three different
industries and three different continents.
Let’s meet the finalists, shall we? And then you can cast your vote here!
Educational Services of America (ESA):
ESA is the United States’ leading provider of K-12 alternative and
special education programs for students with special needs. By
partnering with more than 240 public school districts in 22 states and
the District of Columbia, they serve 12,000 students each year in more
than 170 schools and programs. ESA is using Citrix private cloud
solutions to provide targeted educational offerings to students wherever
they are, any time, on any device without requiring students to go to a
centralized learning center. Customized, web-based curricula can easily
be deployed to thousands of desktops in just hours, rather than in the
60 days required prior to implementing Citrix. Take a look at the video
here.
IDC Frontier:
This subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan and SoftBank provides managed and
self-service cloud computing offerings to its parent companies’
customers and to an ever-growing base of more than 1,000 SMB customers
across the country. IDC Frontier is using Citrix technology to support
its latest offering, NOAH Cloud Services, which launched in July 2011.
The first Japanese Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering of its
kind, NOAH provides a fully-automated cloud management service with an
open API, enabling public and private cloud integration and management
using a network services interface optimized for the local market. Take
a look at the video here.
Suncorp Financial Group:
One of Australia’s largest financial organizations with 16,000
employees and nine million customers, Suncorp has a long history of
making its employees the number one priority. The company has shown that
commitment by pioneering work-at-home, mobility, workshifting and Bring
Your Own (BYO) initiatives, all powered by Citrix. The “Smart
Environments” project at Suncorp Financial Group—the first of its kind
in Australia—uses cloud networking and desktop virtualization to
transform the traditional office environment to an open campus-style
setting, giving employees the freedom to work wherever, whenever and
with whomever, thereby improving productivity and collaboration. Take a
look at the video here.
Now
that you’ve learned a little bit about how these Innovation Awards
finalists are embracing mobile workstyles and cloud services, I
encourage you to cast your vote for the winner! You can learn more about
each nominee and choose your favorite here.
We’ll be announcing the Citrix Innovation Award winner onsite at Synergy. Be sure to register
now, if you haven’t already, so you can join us in person for the big
reveal! Meanwhile, please join me in congratulating this year’s
finalists: Educational Services of America, IDC Frontier and Suncorp
Financial Group. Congratulations to our finalists on their innovative
solutions!