Don’t miss your chance to win a prestigious award at this year’s UK IT Industry Awards 2010.
The closing date for entering is 5pm on 16 July.
The winners will be announced at a lavish prize-giving ceremony, to be held at the Battersea Park Arena in London on Thursday 11 November 2010.
To encourage you to compile your entry for one of our prestigious awards, over the next few weeks were profiling some of last years winners in print and online.
For full run-down of this years award categories and details on how to enter, go to www. computing. co. uk/awards.
Best small IT supplier of the year was won last year by Telnic, which administers the. tel top-level domain used to publish contact information for businesses and individuals, rather than conventional web content.
A typical. tel page is a list of phone numbers, email addresses and links, perfect for those who dont need a full-blown web site to provide their contact details or want to supplement their web site with a quick directory reference which can be accessed from mobiles, dialled directly from softphones and even accessed offline.
When Telnic submitted its entry, the business was just a few months old, having been launched in March 2009. The other entrants in the category were mostly conventional system or service providers, so was Justin Hayward, Telnic communications and business development director, running the risk that the judges wouldnt get Telnics proposition?
“Very much so, but what we do is readily understood by small and micro businesses and individual professionals. Its used by everyone from taxi drivers to doctors,” he says.
The award certainly helped raise awareness of the. tel service. ICANNs biggest domain wholesaler, eNom, started offering. tel addresses in December 2009, and at CeBit in March this year, Telnic picked up a European Seal of e-Excellence award.
“As a small UK business, winning the combined Computing and BCS Award meant a great deal to us,” says Hayward.
So Telnic is still little more than a year old but has amassed more than 280,000 subscribers. In June this year it was rolled out in 16 languages to international domain names IDN. tel. Next up is integration with open authentication provider OpenID.
To organisations mulling over entering this years awards, Hayward says “Take a good look at what you do and pick a category carefully, not necessarily an obvious one. And really believe that what you have is a winner.”
Best technology supplier of the year
Best technology supplier of the year 2009 was won by EMIS for its eponymous web-based healthcare system which enables different healthcare professionals to view and contribute to a patient’s core medical record, improving patient care and reducing waiting times and costs.
For example, Liverpool primary care trust reduced the cost of one service by a factor of 10 and one patient said of the system, “this changed my life.”
The company entered the awards partly “to thank everyone in the company for their hard work in making it happen,” says Sean Riddell, chief executive of EMIS Group. “It has taken five years to develop the system.”
Since winning the award, EMIS has floated successfully on the Alternative Investment Market in March 2010, drumming up a market capitalisation of £175m with a share placing that was twice over-subscribed.
Emis Web has also had a good year.
“More users are coming on board,” says Riddell. “For GPs, the accreditation of the system that is required by NHS Connecting for Health has begun and we hope that by autumn 2010 we will be in a position to roll out the product nationally.”
Riddell says anyone considering entering this year shouldnt shy away from seeking recognition for their hard work.
“Awards such as this are also a great way to recognise the contribution of your whole team,” he says.