Picking the winners

The User Excellence Award, in its 18th year, honors user organizations that demonstrate exceptional use of network technology to further business objectives. Network World editors select winners from a pool of entries submitted by user organizations or vendor representatives.

In evaluating entries, we look for companies that have adapted mainstream technologies creatively or have applied newer infrastructure technologies to solve pressing business problems. Winning projects tend to create great business cases, showing how technology leads to vast savings, new opportunities or demonstrable productivity gains.

Royal & SunAlliance USA won the 2002 award from among more than 50 entries by accomplishing the unheard-of. It enlisted the help of its nearly 7,000 employees to perform a massive PC upgrade from Windows 95 to XP, saving an immediate $1.5 million in contract labor costs while closing security gaps that made it ineligible for worldwide security ISO certification. In the process, it kicked off an identity management system, turned users into partners on software license compliance, and discovered ways to lower software costs and outsourced help desk fees. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Wells' Dairy are runners-up. The VA deserves honor for an enterprise content delivery network that delivers distance-learning and telemedicine applications, while Wells' Dairy winsfor a convergence project that stars video.

Additional companies earned honorable mentions. Click here for their profiles.