Applications Enterprise All-Stars

Guide to the '06 All-Stars Winners alphabetical listing WINNERS BY TECHNOLOGY Applications | LANs & Routers | Network Management | OS, Servers & Data Center | Security | Storage | WAN, VoIP & Convergence | Wireless & Mobility WINNERS BY INDUSTRY Construction | Education | Financial Services | Government | Healthcare | Manufacturing | Media | Retail | Travel/Transportation | Utilities Vendors to the All-Stars

Excellence is learned. So it stands to reason that it also must be studied. In that spirit, the 40 companies honored as winners of Network World's second-annual Enterprise All-Star Award stand as examples of excellence.

But what exactly does that mean? Nearly every enterprise today can point to technology projects that save big bucks. Or to technology projects that let corporations conduct business faster and more efficiently. What differentiates these 40 companies and their award-winning projects can be summed up in a word: innovation.

Each of the projects profiled advances the use of newer technology or uses mainstream tools in an innovative way. For instance, Papa Gino's and D'Angelo Sandwich Shops stands as a proving ground for chip-level security. Wilson & Company, Engineers and Architects, bucks conventional wisdom and uses freeware to automate configuration across dozens of makes and models of desktops. Alamance Regional Medical Center saves $1 million a year through judicious use of application virtualization.

Alamance is hardly alone with its great financial return. It almost goes without saying that All-Star companies know how to squeeze a nickel. In all, winners report saving more than $20.7 million in the first year of implementation, on expenditures of just less than $20 million. Equally impressive is that excellence has become a speedy affair: Projects took a median of eight months from planning to production, with 82% requiring less than a year.

Healthcare dominates the list with one-third of the winners, and for good reason. Healthcare companies are pressured to find cost savings for their efforts. Spending by healthcare companies ranged from $10,000 for a network access-control project to $3.2 million for an integrated wireless infrastructure (with a median of $240,000). The projects immediately paid for themselves, however, with healthcare companies reporting a mean one-year ROI of 227%.