This blog below was sent to me in email. While I was not going to write about it, I am glad someone else called out the awards. The Best of Interop Awards are a great thing in Las Vegas and companies revel in winning or getting just nominated. But there are some problems with them that need to be fixed.
If you have a product, get nominated and win, you should have the product at Interop for people to see. While this is in the rules it has never been pushed on vendors, as was the case this year with Cisco. The product that won was not at Interop, there was no associated material on it and it is not even on the Cisco web site. When I went to go view all of the finalist products on the floor, Cisco told me that they were not showing the product or announcing it until Cisco Live. That's were they wanted to reveal products, I was told.
While watching the award winners announced, there did not seem to be a clear message in each category. The judges spoke on what they were looking for this year, and what they said made me wonder how some even became finalists. The judges should post what the category is about and what they are looking for in each. This should be done well in advance so everyone knows if their product matches that category.
Every product should be on the floor. If it is not then why would it ever be allowed to be a finalist? When I was a judge years ago this was something I brought up when reviewing products, I wanted to see a demo of the product, not just a power point. How else can you judge a product?
It was said by the VP of InformationWeek "It's based specifically on the theory behind a product." If this is the case then anyone can make up a product and win with a PowerPoint.