Business News
Three Finalists Selected For Citrix 2008 Innovation Award
Tuesday 13. May 2008 - Bechtel Corporation, Cocamar Cooperativa Agroindustrial and Mutual of Omaha Lead the Pack in Business Innovation with Citrix Application Delivery and Virtualization Solutions
Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced the three finalists for the annual 2008 Citrix Innovation Award: Bechtel Corporation, Cocamar Cooperativa Agroindustrial and Mutual of Omaha. These finalists were chosen by a panel of IT industry experts, including an industry analyst and a past Citrix Innovation Award winner. The finalists were selected in recognition of their innovative use of Citrix application delivery and virtualization solutions to address organizational or market challenges and advance their businesses. The three finalists will be recognized for their significant accomplishments at the upcoming Citrix Synergy 2008 conference, held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston from May 20 to May 23. The winner will be determined by votes cast both online and during the conference by registered attendees and will be announced on May 21 in the keynote session. To cast your vote now, go to http://www.citrix.com/innovationaward.
Citrix Synergy 2008, formerly Citrix iForum – the App Delivery Expo, is the all-new industry conference where virtualization, networking and application delivery meet. The theme of this years conference is “Virtualize. Optimize. Deliver.” and Citrix Innovation Award finalists will be recognized at the event for their commitment to leveraging application delivery and virtualization solutions to make their businesses more successful and gain a competitive edge. The Citrix Innovation Award recognizes companies that have proven to be thought leaders in various industries and have used application delivery and virtualization to gain competitive advantage, expand their businesses to the global level or move into new markets and next-generation IT architectures.
This years panel of judges included:
Josh Nelson – vice president of network and information technology, Cox Communications (Winner, 2007 Citrix Innovation Award)
Steve Greenberg – founder and president of Thin Client Computing
Michael Rose – associate research analyst, IDC
Abolfazl Sirjani – senior director, advanced products, Citrix
Wes Wasson – senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Citrix
2008 Innovation Award Finalist: Bechtel Corporation
Bechtel Corporation, a nine-time Engineering News-Record top U.S. construction contractor, provides engineering, construction and project management services around the world. Bechtel focuses on a number of sectors including energy, mining, transportation, communications and federal and state government. Bechtel adopted an end-to-end IT virtualization strategy to consolidate its data centers, making them dynamic and cost-effective, and to be able to securely deliver applications to internal employees, job-site employees and partners, even in the most undeveloped and isolated areas. In 2007 the company decided on a holistic plan designed to provide Bechtel with the most agile, flexible, cost-effective IT infrastructure possible. To achieve this, Bechtel moved its data centers away from Bechtel office locations to Internet exchange points to dramatically reduce bandwidth costs to leverage the performance of a higher-speed backbone. A key part of this initiative was server virtualization with Citrix XenServer. By moving to virtual machines, Bechtel achieved a 10 to 1 consolidation ratio for servers, gaining business agility while cutting IT costs. Currently, about 70 percent of the data center servers are virtualized. By adopting virtualization as a core strategy, Bechtel maintains its market leadership position in major construction projects, particularly with partners, while keeping its IT costs down and efficiency high.
2008 Innovation Award Finalist: Cocamar Cooperativa Agroindustrial
Established in 1963, Cocamar Cooperativa Agroindustrial is an agricultural cooperative in rural Brazil. Cocamar receives and commercializes agriculture products based on crops such as soy, corn, wheat, coffee and orange provided by 6,700 associated producers. Cocamar foresees major market opportunities for its producers in the global market. In order to gain competitive advantage Cocamar needed to move from an antiquated IT infrastructure to a modern, application delivery system. Cocamar was managing business across 40 individual IT environments with limited connectivity and without a unified network to efficiently run its supply management software. Among the issues, there were non-programmed stops at receiving cargo that caused queues of trucks. After deploying Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition and diskless Wyse devices, the company raised the availability of its ERP system to manage supply chain to 100 percent, connected 40 rural sites – for reception, storage and industrialization – and reduced truck queues. Citrix Access Gateway usage reinforced mobility with security for global distributors. Cocamar has set itself apart from the competition in the global market and looks to Citrix for fundamental support to increase its local productivity and international business.
2008 Innovation Award Finalist: Mutual of Omaha
Mutual of Omaha, a 100-year old insurance company, is well known within the U.S., in part due to its sponsorship of the television show “Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom.” Recently, Mutual of Omaha heightened its focus on expanding into new markets such as community banking and commercial real estate development to achieve higher returns for its substantial cash reserves and to become a more agile business. Mutual of Omaha looked to Citrix to provide application delivery solutions as the foundation for these changes. With Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition with EdgeSight, Mutual of Omaha can quickly integrate new acquisitions for faster time-to-market, improved application delivery across the enterprise, strengthened security and compliance, and reduced cost to gain an edge on the competition. Citrix XenDesktop allows Mutual of Omaha to centrally host, manage and deliver its desktop environment from the data center, allowing employees at home, on construction sites, in the field and in various branches to securely access the application via Citrix Access Gateway and the Web.