Category descriptions for the awards program
One winner will be recognized in each of the following categories: Efficiency Innovation, Flexibility Innovation, and Visionary Leadership. In addition to these categories, the top nominations from all categories will be judged in a special Innovator of the Year category, which will recognize one winner from the U.S. public sector and one winner from each of the following three global geographies: Americas, APAC, and EMEA.
- Efficiency Innovation: Efficiency innovators are at the forefront of virtualizing their data centers when using a NetApp® shared infrastructure. They are changing the economics of IT within their organizations—minimizing the time, resources, and effort of running IT services—and freeing up those resources to be deployed in other parts of the business. Because of these efforts, these companies are using quantifiably less budget for equipment, people, power, space, and capacity—with the end benefits of decreasing complexities and increasing operational efficiency.
- Flexibility Innovation: Flexibility innovators have created dynamic technology infrastructures that rapidly respond to changing business requirements, thereby enabling technology to scale or contract to drive measurable business value. This agility has allowed these organizations to capitalize on opportunities by expanding into new markets, managing change, developing new products, mitigating risk, and so on in quantifiable ways.
- Visionary Leadership: Visionary Leadership highlights the people who have broken the mold, challenged the status quo, and/or overcome obstacles to move their businesses forward and position themselves more competitively in the marketplace. These visionaries are at the forefront of using technology as a tool for innovation within their organizations and would be seen by people inside and outside the company as true innovators.
