The Best of VMworld 2020 Awards recognize the most innovative new products in the server virtualization, cloud and end-user computing markets. A panel of expert judges evaluated nominated products from vendors associated with this year's virtual conference and named winners in seven categories. Judges also chose one product among those winners that stood above the rest as the Best of Show.
The Virtualization, Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps category encompasses a broad range of products. These products enable organizations to build virtual infrastructures, manage or virtualize essential hardware, and aid operations teams to deploy VM-based applications both on premises and in the cloud.
Winner: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE Nimble Storage dHCI
What the judges said: "Nimble dHCI turns your current servers into an enterprise [hyper-converged infrastructure] solution, including automation and single-pane-of-glass management."
Finalist: Silk, Silk Cloud Data Platform
The Networking and Security category recognizes hardware and software that enhances networking and security in virtual or cloud infrastructures. The products entered into this category can help optimize virtual networks, monitor or protect virtual environments, or enforce security best practices.
Winner: Nvidia, ConnectX-6 Dx
What the judges said: "Smart [network interface cards] are the future. They're incredible, and they support more speed. That's all there is to it."
Finalist: Men&Mice, Men&Mice DDI Suite
The Resilience and Recovery category recognizes products and services designed to back up, restore and replicate data or achieve fault tolerance in a virtual server or cloud infrastructure. These products assist organizations in the event of a disaster and can help businesses get back on their feet after an outage, failure or cyberattack.
Winner: Metallic (a Commvault venture), Core Backup & Recovery
What the judges said: "Cloud-based backup done right for a change. Metallic took the time to figure out what worked in the cloud and what didn't. The company ended up creating an app that was actually designed for the cloud -- a SaaS-based solution for the modern enterprise."
Finalist: Synology Inc., Unified Controller UC3200
Finalist: Nakivo Inc., Backup & Replication
The Digital Workspace category recognizes products that secure mobile devices, applications and content; enable mobile productivity; or enhance the delivery of desktops and applications to various endpoints. In the current work-from-home era, these products have helped keep a variety of organizations afloat.
Winner: ThinPrint, ezeep Hub
What the judges said: "ThinPrint helps users get over a pain point; it increases collaboration. Users can print to everything. In the time of COVID, having a solution for users working remotely who never did before is important."
Judges didn't accept nominations for the Disruptive Technology category. Rather, they elected to recognize two innovative products from other categories with the potential to either create a new market or disrupt an existing market with new technology. Judges considered all nominated products before deciding on a Disruptive Technology award winner.
Winner: Intel, Optane persistent memory
What the judges said: "It's living up to the hype. Anything that requires a tremendous amount of data processing, Optane blows everything out of the water. It's still a little young, but super interesting."
Both VMworld 2020 Disruptive Technology winners provide a unique value proposition to businesses that have specific needs, but judges noted that these products could soon appeal to a wider range of customers as more companies adopt demanding artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. Our second Judges' Choice winner was recognized for the company's ongoing innovation and year-over-year improvements to GPU-acceleration technology.
Winner: Nvidia, Virtual Compute Server (vCS)
What the judges said: "The ability to fractionalize and share the GPU is going to be big, because AI and [machine learning] are really beginning to actually tax and leverage GPU usage."
Judges didn't accept nominations for the Startup Spotlight category. Instead, judges considered a variety of startups associated with the VMworld 2020 conference and selected a relatively new company that brings an innovative product or fresh approach to the market.
Winner: OpenFaas Ltd.
What the judges said: "OpenFaaS makes tasks simpler -- from the mundane to the complex. It's the 'if this, then that' of the serverless world."
The Best of Show winner represents the best of the best. Judges chose this winner from the pool of winners created by other categories in the Best of VMworld Awards.
Winner: Nvidia, ConnectX-6 Dx
