The 2022 Tech Innovator Awards

From among more than 260 applicants, CRN staff selected products spanning the IT industry – including in cloud, infrastructure, security, storage and devices – that offer ground-breaking functionality, differentiation and partner opportunity.

The pace of change and technology innovation in the IT industry, driven by megatrends like cloud computing, automation and digital transformation, continues to accelerate. And the massive shift to hybrid work/work-from-home practices brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred rapid IT development and change in such areas as communications and collaboration software, remote access to applications and data, and security that extends to employees working outside the office security perimeter.

Amidst these rapid shifts innovative IT companies have stepped up and developed new and updated products that meet these needs. These span IT mainstay technologies like networking hardware, data storage systems, laptops and power management systems. But they also include innovative products in newer areas such as automation, edge computing, IoT and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

So what are the new and updated products that are creating the biggest opportunities for the solution providers and strategic service providers working on the front lines with customers?

To help solution providers identify products that are truly innovative and offer value for their customers, the 2022 CRN Tech Innovator Awards showcase IT vendor offerings that provide significant advances in IT – and partner growth opportunities – across a broad range of technology categories including cloud, networking, security, storage and software. The awards spotlight innovative products across 38 categories. The winners and finalists were chosen by CRN staff from among 263 applicants.

Application Development And DevOps

Winner: GitLab 15

At a time when every company is a software company, organizations are increasingly looking to development teams to create more innovative products and drive business results. GitLab 15 is the latest iteration of GitLab‘s One DevOps Platform that shortens development cycle times, improves developer productivity and reduces costs. The platform provides AI, continuous security and compliance, visibility and observability, enterprise agile planning, and workflow automation for data science workloads. With security and compliance incorporated in every step, GitLab 15 allows developers and security professionals to collaborate around business-critical code, keeping security at the forefront of the software development life cycle.

Finalists:

Cycode Next Gen SCA

Katalon Visual Testing

Octopus Deploy

Opsera SaaS DevOps

Automation

Winner: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2 introduces features that allow customers to manage more consistent and reliable automation at massive scale across the globe, hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and the edge. Fully restructured for a hybrid cloud world, Ansible Automation Platform 2 adds self-contained automation capabilities while shifting automation more deeply into the application development life cycle and making it easier for IT teams to address automation needs at scale across varied environments and systems in a standardized way. Ansible Automation Platform 2 offers a cloud-native architecture and new collaboration and developer tools for creating, testing, distributing and managing automation content.

Finalists:

Aisera AI Service Experience Platform (SaaS Version)

Gluware 4.3 – Network RPA and Intelligent Network Automation

Resolve Actions Express (SaaS version)

UIPath Platform 2022.4

Business Intelligence And Analytics

Winner: Domino Data Lab Domino 5.0

The Domino 5.0 MLOps platform helps data science teams improve the speed, quality and impact of data science at scale. The platform centralizes data science work and infrastructure for collaboratively building, training, deploying and managing models more efficiently. It also accelerates model development and deployment, reduces data and infrastructure complexity and costs, and increases collaboration for code-first data science teams. With new capabilities such as autoscaling clusters, data connectors and automated insight, Domino 5.0 unifies model development, deployment and integrated monitoring, facilitating the end-to-end data science life cycle. New workbench capabilities streamline the data acquisition process while integrated workflows accelerate data preparation and model development.

Finalists:

Ahana Cloud for Presto

Incorta Analytics Data Hub for Finance

Tibco Spotfire

Business Software

Winner: Intuit QuickBooks Payroll

QuickBooks Payroll helps small businesses hire, pay and support their employees by providing access to full-service payroll capabilities, automated and streamlined workflows, and support for tax calculations and filings. QuickBooks Payroll provides access to health benefits and gives small businesses the ability to efficiently manage and communicate with their workforce on-the-go via mobile experiences and a seamless integration of time data with QuickBooks Online. Recent enhancements include a redesigned Workforce employee portal to simplify employee experiences, the addition of more controls for how and when automatic payroll is processed, upgraded reports for businesses working with contractors, and faster setup when changing payroll providers.

Cloud Tools And Management

Winner: Cisco AppDynamics Cloud

Cisco AppDynamics Cloud is a cloud-native observability platform for modern applications based on increasingly complex, distributed architectures and services. The platform was purpose-built to observe cloud-native applications at scale, accelerate detection and resolution of performance issues, and deliver actionable insight into application performance and security. AppDynamics Cloud enables collaboration across teams including DevOps, site reliability engineers and other key business stakeholders to achieve common benchmarks like service-level objectives and organizational KPIs. The product focuses on simplicity, usability and intuitiveness to empower IT teams to deliver exceptional digital experiences for application users.

Finalists:

Extreme Networks ExtremeCloud IQ CoPilot

Nerdio Manager for MSP

Nirmata Cloud Native Policy Management

Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud Infrastructure as Code

Data And Information Management

Winner: Aparavi Data Intelligence And Automation Platform 2.0

Aparavi empowers organizations to find and unlock the value of their data wherever it resides, as well as mitigate risks and reduce storage requirements and costs. The cloud-based Aparavi Data Intelligence and Automation Platform finds, automates, governs and consolidates distributed data using data intelligence and automation. Aparavi helps transform data into a competitive asset and make it more accessible for data analytics, machine learning and other tasks. The platform also can clean data and archive it to off-site targets, such as public cloud or object storage-compatible targets, reducing a customer‘s on-premises storage footprint by up to 40 percent and making data less vulnerable.

Finalists:

Aerospike Database 6

Cribl Edge

M-Files Smart Migration

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

YugabyteDB 2.15

Data Protection Software

Winner: Infinidat InfiniSafe

InfiniSafe delivers comprehensive cyber-resilience capabilities to help thwart and recover from cyberattacks across Infinidat‘s entire enterprise storage platforms: InfiniBox, InfiniBox SSA II and InfiniGuard. The technology creates environments with the full features of immutable snapshots, logical air-gapping, a fenced forensic environment and near-instantaneous recovery. Providing a common cyber-resilience system across both primary and secondary storage makes it easier for partners to support, sell and service, and allows storage to be part of a comprehensive corporate cybersecurity strategy, expanding partner margin and revenue opportunities.

Finalists:

Asigra Tigris Data Protection

HYCU Protégé for AWS

Veeam Backup & Replication v11a

Veritas Technologies

Zerto 9.5

Displays

Winner: Samsung The Wall All-in-One (IAB)

Samsung‘s The Wall All-in-One (IAB) is an enormous high-definition, fully immersive modular display that transforms corporate and residential spaces. The Wall IAB has a display thickness of just 49mm and the slim, bezel-less infinity design allows the display to blend seamlessly into its surroundings without disrupting the desired vision both within and beyond the screen. The product boasts a significantly improved installation process: The display features a direct input connection on the screen without a separate device, creating a clean and convenient setup and allowing the combination of two 4K 146-inch screens side by side to create a 32:9 form-factor model.

Finalist:

ViewSonic Omni VX1755 Portable Monitor

Edge Computing

Winner: Scale Computing SC//Fleet Manager

Available as part of the Scale Computing Platform, SC//Fleet Manager is a cloud-hosted monitoring and management offering built for hyperconverged edge computing infrastructure at scale. The technology consolidates real-time conditions for a fleet of clusters running Scale Computing HyperCore, scaling from one to over 50,000 clusters, including storage and compute resources for edge computing deployments. SC//Fleet Manager allows IT administrators to quickly identify issues using a single pane of glass and drill down into a specific cluster to diagnose and fix any problem, making it easier to manage and monitor the health of distributed IT infrastructure.

Finalists:

F5 Distributed Cloud Platform

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 for Edge Computing

Stratus Technologies Second Generation ztC Edge

Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Winner: Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus is designed as a single hybrid cloud platform that helps enterprises develop, deploy, run and manage applications more securely at scale. It builds on the capabilities of the Red Hat OpenShift enterprise Kubernetes platform to provide a consistent way to secure, protect, store and manage applications throughout the software life cycle across clusters and the complete hybrid cloud. With OpenShift Platform Plus ,IT operations and security teams can minimize operational risk, improve developer productivity, and support applications spanning multiple infrastructures and clouds. And it provides everything organizations need for a DevSecOps approach to managing clusters across hybrid cloud systems.

Finalists:

Cisco Nexus 9800 Series Modular Switches

F5 Distributed Cloud Platform

Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Winner: Dell VxRail Satellite And Dynamic Nodes

VxRail is a hyperconverged infrastructure offering jointly engineered by Dell Technologies and VMware. At its heart is the VxRail HCI System Software, delivering full-stack integration, automated end-to-end life-cycle management and a consistent operational model for efficiency and simplicity. Dell introduced new VxRail Satellite Nodes and Dynamic Nodes to help IT teams address changing infrastructure needs. Satellite Node deployments give users the ability to expand VxRail offerings into small and remote locations while providing consistent operations across the IT landscape. Dynamic Nodes utilize VMware HCI Mesh or Dell storage arrays as primary storage, providing the ability to asymmetrically scale compute and storage as needed.

Internet of Things

Winner: AWS IoT ExpressLink

AWS IoT ExpressLink connectivity software powers a range of hardware modules developed by AWS partners such as Espressif, Infineon and U-blox. The connectivity modules include software that implements AWS-mandated security requirements, enabling OEM developers to build secure IoT devices that connect to the cloud and seamlessly integrate with a range of AWS services. AWS IoT ExpressLink modules are preconfigured with cloud connectivity and security technology, allow developers to focus their design efforts on building innovative applications, slash development times from years to weeks, reduce development costs and accelerate time to market.

Finalists:

Forescout Continuum Platform

Ooma AirDial

Viakoo Action Platform

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Winner: Cisco ThousandEyes Internet Insights: Application Outages

Application Outages is the latest addition to Cisco ThousandEyes Internet Insights, providing an end-to-end view of SaaS application performance on a global scale. IT teams gain real-time and historic views into the availability of SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow. When outages occur, Application Outages correlates data with the SaaS domain, instantly identifying the impact and scope, delivering a new layer of capabilities, and empowering proactive communication and remediation. Application Outages is powered by ThousandEyes Internet Insights collective intelligence and does not require deployment or instrumentation.

Finalists:

GoTo Resolve

New Relic Infrastructure Monitoring

Laptops

Winner: Panasonic Connect Toughbook 40

The Panasonic Connect Toughbook 40 is a fully modular laptop that combines the reliability and ruggedness of the Toughbook brand with more power, speed and connectivity for mission-critical industries. The Toughbook 40 is lighter than its previous generation while incorporating a larger 14-inch, full-high-definition touch screen, a color-selectable backlit keyboard and other customizable features like hot-swappable batteries, expanded memory and user-replaceable storage. The new touchpad is 60 percent larger and more sensitive than previous models, enabling better functionality with gloves and in extreme conditions. The laptop’s advanced docking support includes quad pass-through connectors for faster speeds and stronger signals.

Finalists:

Acer Chromebook R753T

Zebra Technologies ET4x-HC Series Tablets

MSP RMM Platforms

Winner: ConnectWise RMM

ConnectWise RMM is built on Asio, a modern cloud architecture designed to provide flexibility, performance, extensibility and security to meet the growing demands of the SMB market. The platform aggregates both software and human elements, covers the spectrum of do-it-yourself and do-it-for-you delivery options, and integrates an intelligent automation engine that provides out-of-the-box automation capabilities solution providers need to deliver customized services. Other product highlights include a single, intuitive interface that allows partners to manage their tech stack and a simple on-boarding and adoption process that enables them to adopt solutions more quickly.

Multifunction Printers

Winner: HP LaserJet Managed E800/E700 Series

The HP LaserJet Managed E800/E700 series is a new portfolio of multifunction, customizable and easily managed printers that supports a collaborative, productivity-focused hybrid workforce and meets today’s digitization requirements. The printers offer comprehensive workflow solutions with new FLOW 2.0 features, including the ability to make edits directly to content on the control panel, as well as customized shortcuts. The printers provide up to 70-page-per-minute printing speed and 300-images-per-minute duplex scan speed powered by HP‘s custom designed quadcore processor. With HP Wolf Enterprise Security6, the new series protects, detects and self-recovers. Reverse and retry technology detect and resolve double paper feed issues and paper jams.

Finalists:

Epson SureColor T7770D

Sharp BP Advanced and Essentials Color Multifunction Printer Series

Networking–Enterprise

Winner: Aruba CX 10000 Series

The Aruba CX 10000 Series is a distributed services switch designed for the next generation of large-scale data centers, addressing the security compliance, performance, agility and scalability demands of the highly distributed, hybrid, multi-cloud application era. Utilizing the Aruba AOS-CX network operating system for data center, campus and edge networks, and the fully programmable Pensando data processing unit, the CX 10000 delivers stateful software-defined services with scale and performance improvements over traditional L2/3 switches at a fraction of the total cost of ownership. The CX 10000 makes the process of deploying distributed services in the enterprise simple and more cost-effective.

Finalists:

Cisco Cloud Monitoring for Catalyst

Fortinet LAN Edge Solution

Prosimo AXI Platform for Autonomous Multi-Cloud Networking

Networking–SMB

Winner: Cytracom ControlOne

ControlOne is a powerful, cloud-native platform built exclusively for MSPs that seamlessly integrates network connectivity and enterprise security, enabling MSPs to eliminate VPNs and traditional firewalls, enforce zero trust and achieve compliance. ControlOne incorporates SD-WAN connectivity, zero-trust networking, cloud connectors for seamless connections to AWS and Microsoft Azure, DNS and web content filtering, micro segmentation and SIEM reporting—all in one offering. Device Posture Check enables MSPs to control access to a network and monitor requirements such as patch deployment, disk encryption status, and the installation of RMM and other required software. A powerful graphical user interface assists with system setup and management.

Finalists:

SonicWall SonicWave 600 Series Access Points

TP-Link ER605v2 Omada Gigabit VPN Router

TP-Link JetStream TL-SG3210XHP-M2 Ethernet 8-Port Switch

Networking–Wireless

Winner: Cisco Catalyst Wi-Fi 6E Access Points

The new Cisco Catalyst 9166, part of the Cisco Catalyst Wi-Fi 6E Access Points line, offers customers and partners the flexibility to manage a wireless network on-premises or in the cloud. It delivers reliability and performance and includes the choice of either Cisco DNA Center or Meraki Dashboard management tools. The 9166 joins Cisco‘s portfolio of Wi-Fi 6E-compliant APs, which take advantage of the 6GHz band expansion for improved network performance, reliability and security. It offers built-in environmental sensors to help businesses streamline health and safety plans, power optimization to reduce energy consumption, and Fastlane+ to optimize applications on Apple devices.

Finalist:

Cradlepoint Cellular Intelligence

Power Protection And Management

Winner: Eaton 5PX G2 UPS

The Eaton 5PX G2 UPS is a flexible offering designed specifically for a complex range of distributed IT and edge environments including servers, switches and storage. With an increased standard runtime and enhanced surge protection, the new UPS technology delivers enhanced connectivity and cybersecurity protection for Eaton‘s legacy 5PX UPS system such as enabling IT managers to conduct mass firmware updates while protecting connected equipment. With the enhanced connectivity of Eaton’s Gigabit Network Card, users can manage and monitor critical infrastructure in real time through integration with Eaton‘s Intelligent Power Manager disaster avoidance software and PredictPulse remote monitoring service.

Finalists:

CyberPower CP1500PFCRM2U PFC Sinewave UPS System

Janitza GridVis 8.0

Schneider Electric Smart UPS Ultra

Vertiv Liebert GXT5 Lithium-Ion, Model GXT5LI-1500LVRT2UXL

Processors

Winner: Intel Xeon D-2700, D-1700 Processors

Intel Xeon D-2700 and D-1700 processors are Intel‘s first system-on-a-chip built for software-defined network and edge systems, extending compute with acceleration beyond the core data center and generating a better overall experience for key network and edge workloads. Xeon D processors are designed for demanding enterprise use cases such as security appliances, enterprise routers and switches, cloud storage, wireless networks, and AI inference and edge servers while also providing a flexible, cost-effective foundation for the next-generation edge. The processors include integrated AI and crypto acceleration, built-in Ethernet, and support for Intel Time Coordinated Computing and Time Sensitive Networking.

SD-WAN

Winner: Fortinet Secure SD-WAN

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN monitors and manages today‘s complex connections, giving IT teams visibility into the entire network to anticipate and troubleshoot network issues, automate remediation, implement and enforce policy, and centrally control access to applications and resources per user, device, session and application. A significant update to Fortinet Secure SD-WAN included enhancements led by Fortinet Universal ZTNA (zero trust network access), advanced routing and enterprise-grade security—all integrated by a single operating system to support secure application access and application steering. Fortinet also integrated Secure SD-WAN with Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN, making it possible to apply advanced security policies to virtual WAN traffic.

Finalists:

Aryaka Unified SASE with SD-WAN

Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN

Secure Service Edge

Winner: Axis Atmos Security Service Edge Platform

Short for “Atmosphere,” Atmos is a security service edge (SSE) platform—a set of integrated, cloud-delivered, security services that use identity and policy to broker secure connections between authorized users and business resources. Atmos helps IT avoid the need to connect users to the corporate network, drastically reduces exposure to ransomware threats, and provides an unprecedented level of visibility. Using a zero trust architecture, Atmos extends secure connectivity to users’ locations through 350 Atmos edge locations running on the global backbone of AWS Global Accelerator, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle, syncing authentication, authorization and connectivity across the workforce, ecosystem partners and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Finalists:

Barracuda CloudGen WAN

Cisco+ Secure Connect

The Lookout Cloud Security Platform

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) from Windstream Enterprise

Security: Cloud

Winner: CrowdStrike Cloud Security

CrowdStrike Cloud Security provides organizations with the flexibility to determine how best to secure cloud applications across the continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline and cloud infrastructure across AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. CrowdStrike takes an adversary-focused approach to its cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) and provides agent-based (Falcon CWP) and agentless (Falcon Horizon CSPM) offerings delivered from the cloud-native CrowdStrike Falcon platform. CrowdStrike Cloud Security delivers a number of CNAPP capabilities including cloud security posture management, cloud workload protection, cloud infrastructure entitlement management, container security, indicators of misconfiguration and indicators of attack.

Finalists:

Aviatrix ThreatIQ with ThreatGuard

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP

Cisco Umbrella SIG Advantage

Fortinet FortiCNP

Illumio Cloud Secure

Wiz Cloud Detection and Response

Security: Data Security

Winner: Salt Security API Protection Platform

The Salt Security API Protection Platform identifies risks and vulnerabilities in APIs across their entire build, deploy and runtime life cycle before they are exploited by attackers. It combines data with AI and machine learning to baseline millions of users and APIs to detect the reconnaissance activity of bad actors and block them. Through its API Context Engine architecture, the Salt platform provides API design analysis in pre-production, discovers all APIs and the sensitive data they expose, pinpoints and stops API attackers, and provides remediation insight learned during runtime that developers use to harden APIs. Salt‘s runtime protection prevents data exfiltration, account takeovers and service disruption.

Finalists:

Deep Instinct Prevention for Applications

Keeper Security One-Time Share

Security: Email Security

Winner: Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration (Avanan)

Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration (Avanan) prevents malicious emails, including phishing, malware and ransomware attacks, from reaching users’ inboxes. Check Point acquired Avanan in August 2021. Connecting via API, the technology catches evasive attacks that other products miss, reducing phishing emails reaching the inbox by 99.2 percent. It also secures all lines of business communication including Slack and Teams. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is backed by Threat Cloud, Check Point‘s AI-powered threat intelligence database, and integrates information from network, cloud and user security.

Finalists:

INKY Advanced Attachment Analysis

Trustifi Smart Indexing Archiving Solution

Security: Endpoint Protection

Winner: Xcitium ZeroDwell Containment

ZeroDwell Containment is a patented endpoint security technology that can reside on top of third-party security stacks and proactively protects against ransomware and other malware. The software prevents damage from potential threats by isolating them using kernel-level API virtualization and rendering them harmless until their intent can be determined, eliminating dwell time and providing complete endpoint protection. The system also reduces false positive alerts by 98 percent, eliminating alert fatigue and allowing security professionals to focus on legitimate threats. ZeroDwell Containment is the cornerstone of a new suite of Xcitium products that includes Advanced Endpoint Detection and Response and Extended Managed Detection and Response.

Finalists:

BeachheadSecure for MSPs

Cisco Secure Client

Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management

Sophos Intercept X

Security: Enterprise Network Security

Winner: SonicWall Network Security Appliance NSa 5700 Next Generation Firewall

The SonicWall NSa 5700 is a high-speed, next-generation firewall that utilizes a massively scalable hardware architecture designed to fit in a single rack- mountable unit. The high port density of the NSa 5700 features multiple 10-Gigabit Ethernet and 1-Gigabit Ethernet fiber and copper interfaces, enabling fast, scalable security with support for inspecting TLS 1.3 encrypted traffic. The appliance leverages cloud-based and on-premises sandboxing with SonicWall‘s real-time, deep-memory inspection technology to deliver high-speed threat prevention and TLS throughput that supports millions of simultaneous connections. The NSa 5700 provides centralized management and includes advanced networking features such as high availability, SD-WAN, dynamic routing, and virtual routing and forwarding.

Finalists:

Check Point Quantum Lightspeed Security Gateways

Fortinet Work-From-Anywhere Security

Infoblox 3.0

Netenrich: Resolution Intelligence Cloud

Security: Identity And Access Management

Winner: CyberArk Identity Secure Web Sessions

CyberArk Identity Secure Web Sessions records, audits and protects end-user activity within designated web applications, providing security and compliance professionals with the means to efficiently identify anomalous activity, investigate issues and support audits. The service is designed for companies with a variety of web-based business applications that contain sensitive data such as financial records, customer information or intellectual property. Secure Web Sessions allows organizations to develop in-depth insight by recording end-user actions down to every mouse click without impairing the end-user experience. Any web application accessible through CyberArk Identity Single Sign-On can be protected, providing consistent controls over sensitive data residing within web apps.

Finalists:

Keeper Connection Manager

Saviynt Healthcare Identity Cloud

Security: Managed Detection And Response

Winner: eSentire MDR for Microsoft 365 Defender

Rounding out its support for Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft‘s security toolset, eSentire expanded its MDR for Microsoft Services offering with new coverage across Microsoft Defender for Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. These additions provide visibility and response capabilities around Microsoft 365 Defender (endpoint, email, identity and cloud application security), helping customers unlock the full value of their Microsoft investment. The eSentire offering now delivers cyber investigation, response and remediation capabilities that cover endpoints, users and critical cloud applications and workloads, adding user identity-level response to eSentire’s comprehensive counterthreat arsenal.

Finalists:

Barracuda XDR

Cynet 360 AutoXDR

Fortinet FortiXDR

Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Managed Detection and Response

SentinelOne XDR Agent

Security: Management

Winner: Tenable.asm

The Tenable.asm external attack surface management technology continuously maps the entire internet and discovers connections to an organization’s internet- facing assets, whether internal or external to its networks. That provides organizations with a 360-degree view of their full attack surface, helping them assess their security posture and prioritize remediation actions. A key innovation of Tenable.asm is its ability to discover domain names that organizations may not realize they own, automatically discovering domains related to assets in an organization‘s inventory and alerting security teams. Tenable.asm includes a vulnerability management platform that provides a single view of internal and external risks.

Finalists:

Hunters SOC Platform

ThreatQuotient ThreatQ Platform

Tufin Orchestration Suite

Vulcan Cyber Risk Management Platform

Security: SMB Network Security

Winner: Sophos Firewall

Sophos Firewall provides network performance, protection, flexibility and resiliency for organizations, delivering zero-day threat protection, identifying and stopping ransomware and other advanced threats, all while accelerating important Software-as-a-Service, SD-WAN and cloud application traffic. A new version of Sophos Firewall launched in April 2022 with Xstream SD-WAN capabilities and best-in-class VPN enhancements. Capability expansions dynamically process and route traffic, dramatically improving network performance and protection by freeing up resources for TLS and deep-packet inspection. Sophos Firewall is a pillar of Sophos‘ SASE strategy, providing a simplified and scalable offering over traditional remote-access VPNs. It’s also part of the Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem.

Finalists:

Check Point Quantum Spark

Timus Networks

WatchGuard Firebox M290, M390, M590 and M690

Storage: Cloud

Winner: Qumulo on Azure

Qumulo on Azure is a petabyte-scale data platform delivered as a managed service in the cloud. Qumulo significantly enhanced its cloud capabilities on Azure in June 2022, utilizing its patented serverless storage technology, improving efficiency and providing cloud file storage that is said is 44 percent lower in cost than competitive file storage solutions on Azure. Qumulo on Azure scales to multiple petabytes and billions of files in a single namespace, offering 25 percent faster performance than competitive alternatives for data-intensive cloud applications and high-performance workloads. Customers can scale from 3 GB to 20 GB and the multiprotocol file system supports workloads across Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.

Finalists:

DataCore Bolt 1.0

Lightbits

Nasuni File Data Platform

Storage: Enterprise

Winner: Pure Storage FlashBlade//S

FlashBlade//S is the next generation of the FlashBlade storage platform, designed to support exabyte-scale data storage and application needs. Building on the simplicity, reliability and scalability of the first-generation FlashBlade, FlashBlade//S leverages Pure‘s all-flash hardware and innovative software and is built using all-QLC (quad-level cell) flash architecture and DirectFlash modules. FlashBlade//S is designed to support data-heavy, unstructured workloads efficiently and delivers more than twice the performance, density and power efficiency of the first FlashBlade generation. FlashBlade//S runs on Purity//FB 4.0 software and can store almost 2 PB of raw data in a single 5U chassis.

Finalists:

Dell PowerMax

Infinidat InfiniBox SSA II

NetApp FAS9500

Storcentric Nexsana Unity NV10000

Storage: SMB

Winner: StorCentric Nexsan EZ-NAS

The Nexsan EZ-NAS network-attached storage system delivers Nexsan‘s enterprise storage technology in a form factor and at a price point for SMBs and large enterprise edge applications, targeting such use cases as edge repositories, digital video and media workflows, and video surveillance deployments. EZ-NAS features an easy-to-configure 1U form factor and four drives with up to 72 TB of raw capacity and 1.5 GBps of throughput. It delivers enterprise-class features such as in-line compression, Active Directory support and data-at-rest encryption and comes with the Retrospect software for optional add-on services including data backup, cloud connector and ransomware anomaly detection.

Finalist:

Dell PowerVault

Unified Communications And Collaboration Hardware

Winner: Poly Studio X70

The Poly Studio X70 is a premium videoconference bar that is designed to provide large conference rooms with premium sound and video quality. The system combines dual 4K, 20-megapixel cameras with two-way stereo speakers (with aluminum cone tweeters and advanced bass ports) and boasts an all-in-one, plug-and-play design that eliminates tangled cables and IT headaches. The system has built-in cloud video applications that do not require a PC or separate gateway and features Poly DirectorAI automatic framing technologies. Also included are Poly NoiseBlockAI and Acoustic Fence technologies that prevent distracting noises and side conversations from interrupting meetings.

Finalists:

DTEN ONboard

Owl Labs Meeting Owl 3

Unified Communications And Collaboration Software

Winner: 8x8 Conversation IQ

8x8 Conversation IQ extends contact center capabilities, such as voice interaction quality management and speech analytics, to any employee across an organization, enabling team leaders and supervisors to oversee, evaluate, score and analyze employee voice interactions. Delivered via the 8x8 XCaaS cloud communications and contact center solution, 8x8 Conversation IQ applies conversational AI to help organizations uncover insights, foster coaching, and ensure that professional engagements deliver consistent experiences for all user roles, from the contact center to the front desk and the back office. The system’s AI-infused reporting and analytics capabilities deliver insight into employees‘ communications effectiveness, process adherence and regulatory compliance.

Finalists:

Amazon Connect

Cisco Webex Go

GoTo Connect

Zoom Whiteboard

Virtualization/Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Winner: IGEL OS

IGEL OS is a managed endpoint operating system for providing secure access to any digital workspace. The company released IGEL OS 11 in July 2022 with native support for Microsoft Teams—the result of a collaboration between IGEL and Microsoft begun in November 2019. Teams now runs on IGEL OS-powered endpoint devices connecting to Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop, delivering Teams capabilities—including collaboration and videoconferencing—that are on par with Windows-powered endpoints. In October IGEL further simplified the adoption of Microsoft Azure-delivered cloud workspaces with a new IGEL OS for Windows 365.

Finalists:

ATSG Hosted Virtual Desktop

Stratodesk NoTouch OS