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2015 Best of Interop Finalists: 27 Groundbreaking Products

  • We’re pleased to announce the finalists for the 2015 Best of Interop awards. The awards recognize innovation in enterprise technology by Interop exhibitors.

    These finalists are helping push the IT industry forward with products and services that solve new problems, or find better, faster, or cheaper ways to deal with the problems we already have. In this list you’ll find souped-up feeds and speeds, smarter automation, enhanced capabilities, and new nerd knobs you can tweak to your heart’s content.

    Finalists were chosen from 91 submissions in nine categories, including networking, security, mobility, cloud computing, and SDN.

    We thank our Best of Interop judges, who include IT executives and practitioners, analysts, and award-winning technology editors. They gave their time and expertise to wade through all the submissions and narrow them down to this list.

    Judges will get in-depth briefings and demos from the finalists before choosing the winners. Winners will be announced on the Expo floor on Tuesday, April 28 at 5:30 in the Interop Theater.

    In addition to the category winners, we’ll also announce a Best of Interop Grand Prize winner and Best Startup. On Wednesday, Interop attendees can vote for the Audience Choice Award winner during the keynote presentations.

    Image: Gadini

  • Applications

    Applications are fast becoming the lifeblood of a business. The Best of Interop applications category covers a broad swath -- everything from mobile apps to Web and cloud applications. It includes applications for enterprises as well as consumer-facing apps. To that end, the finalists represent a diverse mix of products: video wall software, a cloud-based directory, and collaboration software.

    Hiperwall -- Hiperwall 4.0

    JumpCloud -- JumpCloud Directory-as-a-Service

    RedBooth Private Cloud

    Image: geralt

  • Cloud/Virtualization

    Cloud computing has become an integral part of today's enterprise infrastructure landscape. This category encompasses public cloud services plus hardware, software and services for building private clouds. It also includes cloud provisioning and orchestration tools. Since virtualization is a core component for cloud computing, we also include products such as VDI and tools required for managing virtualized infrastructure.

    CloudVelox -- CloudVelox One Hybrid Cloud Platform for Pilot Light DR

    FixStream -- FixStream Operational Analytics and Visualization Platform

    Tonomi (formerly Qubell)

    Image: Daniel Spless

  • Data Center

    A lot goes into a data center and this category covers it all: platforms such as blade or racked servers, interconnection technologies like InfiniBand, converged infrastructure, as well as cooling equipment, backup power, and physical security systems. This year, Cisco dominates the category with two products as finalists.

    Cisco -- Cisco Intelligent Traffic Director

    Cisco -- Cisco UCS Mini

    Fiber Mountain -- Glass Core

    Image: Tristan Schmurr

  • Mobility

    Mobility has become a critical for businesses as the number of wireless devices continues to skyrocket and employees need access from anywhere at any time. In this category, we include WLAN products, BYOD tools for managing mobile devices, plus technologies that enable communications across device platforms, such unified communications software.

    Cisco -- Cisco Hyperlocation Module

    Citrix -- Xen Mobile

    EnGenius Technologies -- EZMaster Distributed Network Management System

    Image: Niek Verlaan

  • Networking

    It's very interesting times for the networking industry with so many emerging technologies poised to change how enterprises run their networks. In fact, there's so much going on that we needed two Best of Interop categories to cover it all, with a separate software-defined networking category. Here are the finalists in networking:

    ALE -- Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Intelligent

    Cloud Genix -- CloudGenix ION

    IP Infusion -- OcNos

    Image: Norlando Pobre

  • Performance/Management/Monitoring

    Today's IT infrastructure is highly complex, making tools to manage and monitor performance critical. This category includes a broad array of products, from configuration management tools, network test equipment, and WAN optimization tools to load balancers and help desk products. This year's finalists represent a diverse range of products, illustrating the complex environments IT pros manage.

    ExtraHop Networks -- ExtraHop EH9100

    WildPackets -- Omnipliance WiFi

    VMware -- vRealize Operations 6

  • SDN

    Simply put, software-defined networking is hot. According to market-research firm IDC, the worldwide SDN market will surge from $960 million last year to more than $8 billion by 2018. The market is filled with both startups and established companies, as illustrated by this year's Best of Interop SDN finalists.

    Big Switch Networks -- Big Cloud Fabric 2.5

    Cisco -- Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure

    VMware -- VMware NSX 6.1

    Image: geralt

  • Security

    After so many high-profile breaches making headlines last year, including the attacks on Target, Home Depot, and Sony, security has become a priority for many companies. In this category, we include hardware, software, and cloud-based or managed services designed to prevent and mitigate cyberattacks. The finalists illustrate a range of protective measures.

    Dell -- Dell SonicWall Secure Remote Access

    ESET -- ESET Remote Administrator

    Tufin -- Tufin Orchestration Suite R 15-1

    Image: Chado Nihi

  • Storage

    Like networking, storage is undergoing massive transformation with the rise of all-flash storage systems, hyperconvergence, and software-defined storage. This category covers the growing range of storage products, including traditional attached storage, SSDs, storage management and virtualization products, backup and recovery technologies, and cloud-based storage.

    AIC -- SB122-PH

    AirWatch by VMware -- AirWatch Content Locker

    NEC -- NEC Hydrastor HS8-4000

    Image: Aron Herne