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Microsoft & Novell win 2007 Frost & Sullivan Award for System Interoperability
IT News Online Staff
2008-01-01

Frost & Sullivan has awarded Microsoft and Novell the Industry Innovation and Advancement Award for System Interoperability at its recently held '2007 India ICT Awards'.

The award for Industry Innovation is presented each year to companies for broader, more comprehensive participation in the industry and contributions to the advancement of the market. This is the first time the award has been presented for interoperability.

Radhesh Balakrishnan, Director - Platform Strategy, Microsoft India, said, "Interoperability is one of the top priorities for Microsoft and this award is a testament to our effort and investments in this area. We are focused on achieving Interoperability by design and by working closely with the industry, community and the standards bodies. We are excited about this prestigious award recognizing our approach to addressing the customer needs in partnership with Novell."

"This award further strengthens our commitment and we look forward to working closely with customers in India to help systematically address their interoperability needs," added Balakrishnan.

Late last year, on November 2nd, 2006, Microsoft and Novell signed an agreement focused on bridging the worlds of proprietary and open source technology with a focus on to improving interoperability for mixed IT environments.

The Novell and Microsoft alliance is based on a foundation to expand innovation and collaboration through a mutual respect for intellectual property. As a result, both organizations have collaborated to help improve Windows and Linux interoperability in four areas: virtualization, systems management, directory integration and identity, and office document formats. This technology will help customers reduce costs in their data centers, gain new levels of flexibility and streamline operations, all with complete IP peace of mind.

Dr. T. R. Madan Mohan, Director (Consulting), ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East, said, "Enterprises today have geographically dispersed complex, heterogeneous hardware and software systems. The ability of systems to cooperate, communicate and use the information transferred amongst them, is interoperability, hence it becomes important to exploit the IT systems deployment. From a software perspective, interoperability of the systems is to exchange data based on common set of procedures, protocols and formats. Microsoft and Novell, by signing to support interoperability between world's largest OS and popular Open Source Novell Suse Linux have committed to reduce the cost of operating hybrid systems."

To choose a recipient of this award, the analyst team tracks emerging and existing markets and evaluates the contributions of industry participants. This is accomplished through interviews with all the market participants, and extensive secondary research. Industry contributions that are considered, are elements such as the creation of new industry standards and the adoption of a product or process by leading manufacturers. Finally, competitors are compared and ranked for relative position. Frost & Sullivan then narrows down and presents the award to the company that has most altered the industry due to its creativeness and innovation.

In addition to the above methodology, there are specific criteria used to determine final competitor rankings in this industry. These criteria include, Technology innovation contrasted against competitors, New product/process introduction, Adoption of the technology/process by the leading market participants, Advancement of the industry through research, Ability to conceptualize industry activities while successfully addressing customer needs.