In-Depth
The 2008 Readers' Choice Awards: Introducing Redmond's Triple Crown
To recognize the dynasties in our annual Readers' Choice competition, <i>Redmond</i> is introducing the "Triple Crown," a new award for products that have won (at least) three Readers' Choice honors in a row.
The number three is everywhere. Three strikes, three traffic lights, the three-ring circus -- they're all famous triads. For curious Googlers -- sorry, Microsoft, we mean MSN LiveSearchers, of course -- there's even a Web site called Threes.com that dedicates itself to all things triple.
Well, Threes.com can add a new entry to its list of trinities -- the Redmond Readers' Choice Triple Crown award, which honors products that have won (at least) three consecutive Readers' Choice Awards.
In fact, some of this year's winners have won four times in a row or more -- but for the purposes of the Triple Crown, we're only going back two years, to 2006.
A quick glance at this year's results shows that a majority of the product winners this year are taking home Redmond's Triple Crown. And that's why we invented it -- not because it's rare but because it's common. Winning a Readers' Choice Award is always an honor, but those products that win again and again deserve special recognition for staying on top in a competitive industry, and that's what the Triple Crown award and logo give them.
They have to stay on top in order to win it, though. The Triple Crown is for winners of three consecutive awards, not just for products that have won three times. And it doesn't go to ISV winners, either -- although being an ISV, or non-Microsoft, winner is still an important honor -- but only to those products that come out on top three times running.
And while there are a lot of Triple Crown winners this time around, every one of them will have to come out swinging next year in order to retain the award. A couple of two-time winners might just find themselves with a Triple Crown next year.
Network and Systems Management
Best Network Management Product:
22 products in category
| ScriptLogic Desktop Authority |
| Winner and ISV Winner 17.1% |
| Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (formerly MOM) |
| Preferred Product 15.8% |
| Microsoft Systems Management Server |
| Preferred Product 14.8% |
It's a huge upset for ScriptLogic's Desktop Authority application, which knocks off two competitors from Microsoft for its first-ever victory in this category. System Center
Operations Manager and Systems Management Server might have split the votes between them, giving Desktop Authority an opening, but ScriptLogic's product didn't fail to capitalize on the situation.
Users say they love it. Scott C. Davis, IT director for the College of Architecture, Design and Construction at Auburn University in Alabama, used Desktop Authority to untangle a nasty printing problem that involved sorting out printing rights for more than 2,500 users on more than 70 printers: "I'm the IT director, and I've got four people that report to me. I've got one person assigned to architecture, one assigned to industrial design and one to building science. It would take all four of us a day just to get the printing right-I'm doing it all now in a phone call and an e-mail."
With Desktop Authority, it's all about simplicity, says Tory Skyers, senior infrastructure engineer at Prudential Fox and Roach, a real estate firm that operates in greater Philadelphia. "It doesn't take a long time to understand what you're doing," Skyers says. "This product is easy to manage and easy to get a hold of. I like the ease of use." |
Best Application Management Product:
21 products in category
Best Performance Management Product:
16 products in category
Best General Network Monitoring Tool:
53 products in category
| Microsoft Operations Manager |
| Triple Crown Winner 20.3% |
| Cisco Systems Syslog Analyzer |
| ISV Winner 15.9% |
| HP OpenView Operations for Windows |
| Preferred Product 8.7% |
| Readers liked the big boys in this category. Operations Manager wins the Triple Crown in yet another category, this time in a field packed with 53 products. Another mega-vendor, Cisco, chimes in as ISV winner with Syslog Analyzer. HP, yet another monster player, scores with a preferred product. Readers also offered a long list of favorite products not included among this year's survey choices. |
Best Interoperability Product:
4 products in category
| MKS Toolkit |
| Triple Crown Winner 38.1% |
| Centrify DirectControl |
| Preferred Product 20.5% |
| Likewise (formerly called Centeris) Likewise |
| Preferred Product 19.5% |
| MKS Toolkit won its category handily and snatched a Triple Crown. Chris Hambleton, a
Bristol, England-based deputy engineering general manager for Zuken, a Japanese electronic and engineering design firm, passes on via e-mail a Toolkit success story: "Zuken started using MKS over 10 years ago in order to help with the transition of its Unix-based tools to the NT platform. This helped us to bring our Unix-based tools to the market on the PC platform more rapidly. This was originally used to port our VISULA suite of printed circuit board (PCB) design tools to the PC platform. It also helped us to introduce our Unix-trained developers more rapidly to NT and ease the transition to development on the PC platform. MKS is now also used in our Lightning suite of PCB design tools for the design of high-speed PCBs. MKS continues to be actively used in development and is a central part of the development environment on the PC platform." |
Best Bandwidth/Traffic Monitoring Product:
5 products in category
| Lightspeed Systems Total Traffic Control |
| Winner 23.5% |
| Argent Guardian |
| Preferred Product 20.1% |
| Network Instruments Observer |
| Preferred Product 18.1% |
| Lightspeed's Total Traffic Control is one win away from a Triple Crown, racking up its second straight success this year. It narrowly beat Argent Guardian, with Network Instruments Observer also coming close. Interestingly, fully 10 percent of readers in this category wrote in a product that wasn't in our survey list. |
Best Web Usage Monitor:
11 products in category
Best Asset Management/ Resource Inventory Product:
12 products in category
| Altiris Asset Management Suite |
| Triple Crown Winner 25.0% |
| Altiris Inventory Solution |
| Preferred Product 11.7% |
| Novell Asset Manager |
| Preferred Product 11.7% |
| Numara (formerly Intuit) Track-It |
| Preferred Product 10.9% |
| Symantec's Altiris acquisition looks wiser all the time, and Asset Management suite helps buoy that outlook by taking home a Triple Crown. Altiris also scored a Preferred Product nod in the same category with Altiris Inventory Solution. We awarded an extra Preferred Product laurel because Novell and Altiris Inventory Solution finished in a dead heat for second place, and Numara was very close behind. |
Best License Management Product:
6 products in category
Best Compliance Tool:
16 products in category
Best Virtual Server Product:
2 products in category
| VMware Server |
| Triple Crown Winner and ISV Winner 60.0% |
| Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 |
| Preferred Product 28.3% |
| Its stock price might have taken a few hits in 2008, and it might be facing new competition from Microsoft, but VMware remains king of the Readers' Choice virtualization jungle. GSX easily won over Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 to take the rare Triple Crown-ISV Winner honor. ESX, another VMware product, scored quite a few write-in votes as well. |
Best Virtual PC Product:
5 products in category
| VMware Workstation Edition |
| Triple Crown Winner and ISV Winner 57.8% |
| Microsoft Virtual PC for Windows |
| Preferred Product 35.0% |
| Jared Beard, associate director of IT labs at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., notes one reason why he likes Triple Crown winner Workstation Edition: "Students can take environments with them at the end of the semester. It lets them take that VM processor hardware to a processor back home and continue the work. A lot of times when you're working on a PC at the end of the class, it's done. That machine is wiped, and it's gone. [Workstation Edition] gives you flexibility like you've never had before." |
Best Non-Microsoft Browser:
5 products in category
| Firefox |
| Triple Crown Winner 77.5% |
| To be fair, our users seem to prefer Internet Explorer to non-Microsoft options, but Firefox so dominated the non-Microsoft choices that we didn't even bother awarding
Preferred Products in this category. For what it's worth, though, Netscape Navigator is still hanging on with about 3 percent of respondents. |
Best SQL Tool:
14 products in category
Installation and Deployment
Best Software Distribution Product:
11 products in category
Best Software Packaging Product:
4 products in category
Best Drive Imaging Product:
4 products in category
| Symantec Ghost Suite |
| Triple Crown Winner 54.2% |
| Acronis True Image |
| Preferred Product 26.3% |
| Altiris Migration Suite |
| Preferred Product 8.3% |
| Almost everybody's a winner in this category, but Symantec's Ghost Suite is the big winner, bringing home a Triple Crown and more than 50 percent of the vote. Count Auburn's Davis as a fan: "Ghost works for us and it works well," he says succinctly. |
Administration
Best Migration Product:
16 products in category
| Quest Migration Suite for Active Directory/Exchange |
| Triple Crown Winner 17.1% |
| Altiris Deployment Solution |
| Preferred Product 13.6% |
| Acronis Migrate Easy |
| Preferred Product 11.1% |
| Acronis Snap Deploy |
| Preferred Product 11.1% |
| This was a real barn-burner, but Quest's suite hung on to nab a Triple Crown and just nip an Altiris application and two Acronis products. In this category, 10 percent of readers voted for "Other," showing how competitive the migration technology space is right now. Once again, we bestowed an extra Preferred Product award because the two Acronis products tied each other. |
Best Server Migration Product:
7 products in category
Best Group Policy Manager:
11 products in category
Best Disk Defragmentation and Drive Monitoring Tool:
7 products in category
Security
Best Firewall Product-Hardware-Based:
14 products in category
Best Firewall Product-Software-Based:
12 products in category
Best Security Auditing Product:
23 products in category
Best Intrusion Detection System:
15 products in category
Best Intrusion Prevention System:
18 products in category
Best Smart Card/Biometric/Two-Factor Authentication System:
10 products in category
| RSA SecureID |
| Triple Crown Winner 55.8% |
| Digital Persona |
| Preferred Product 6.3% |
| ActivCard Trinity |
| Preferred Product 5.2% |
| RSA SecureID gets a Triple Crown here with a dominant score-no one seems close to approaching SecureID's popularity. |
Best Secure Messaging Tool or Service (Spam and Content Filtering):
50 products in category
Best Anti-Virus Tool:
11 products in category
Best Anti-Spyware Tool:
13 products in category
| McAfee Anti-Spyware |
| Triple Crown Winner 22.0% |
| Trend Micro Antispyware |
| Preferred Product 18.0% |
| Webroot |
| Preferred Product 9.1% |
| Elvis Costello sang about "Watching the Detectives," but McAfee is our readers' choice for keeping an eye on the spies. And that's a Triple Crown for Symantec's security rival. |
Training and Certification
Best Exam Preparation Product or Service:
10 products in category
| Microsoft Press |
| Winner 26.0% |
| Transcender |
| Preferred Product and ISV Winner 23.6% |
| Cisco Press |
| Preferred Product 9.7% |
| Microsoft Press steals this category back after getting knocked off in 2007. Transcender still comes out an ISV Winner. |
Best Online, Disk-Based or Instructor-Led Training:
15 products in category
Best Windows Certification-Based Boot Camp:
5 products in category
Storage and Backup
Best Backup System:
23 products in category
Best Storage Management Product:
18 products in category
Best Disaster Recovery Product or Service:
27 products in category
Best Clustering and Failover Solution:
7 products in category
Best Load Balancing Product:
9 products in category
Most Reliable Windows-Based Server Platform:
5 products in category
| HP |
| Winner 42.7% |
| Dell |
| Preferred Product 12.0% |
| IBM |
| Preferred Product 12.0% |
| HP edges incumbent Dell in this clash of the titans. The final margin of victory was just 16 votes-we almost had to examine hanging chads. |
Best RemoteTroubleshooting Solution:
13 products in category
Best Network Automation and Batch Processing tool:
14 products in category
Best Scripting Tool:
5 products in category
Best Patch
Management Product:
17 products in category
Best Application Sharing Tool:
3 products in category
| Citrix XenApp |
| Winner and ISV Winner 48.3% |
| Microsoft Terminal Services |
| Preferred Product 47.0% |
| Down goes Microsoft! Well, at least in one category, anyway. By the slimmest of margins, Citrix steals the application-sharing tool category and ruins Terminal Server's Triple Crown chances. |