Winners crack open the champagne at inaugural CNET UK Awards

CNET UK, the publisher of silicon.com, held its first annual awards ceremony last night, in association with IBM. Here are the winners and what they did right...

Business Technology Innovation of the Year: Discover Travel and Tours International Ltd

During the summer of 2003, Discover Travel and Tours International introduced an XML interface which allows data to be sent directly to publishers of travel brochures, preformatted exactly as the publishers want it. Previously, data was sent through the mail on disk and reformatted by hand from the reservations system along with the images of properties.

The XML theme is currently being extended at Discover Travel, with a new custom-built XML gateway that allows any operator to directly book into Discover's system from their own, the only limitation being that they must be able to generate and interpret XML. Cost savings at the company have been substantial, allowing it to generate healthy profits this year.

Here is more than anecdotal evidence that pioneering web services work is being done in the travel sector.

Turnaround of the year: BT When one of your staunchest critics says: "I don't want to appear like a BT apologist but BT is now moving as aggressively as it can and has really gone up a gear. From our position we've seen a real shift in BT's stance on broadband", you know you've done something right.

Those were the words of Andy Williams who runs the Broadband4Britain campaign. Previously he had criticised BT's go slow on ADSL roll out but he, and many others, have been forced to accept BT's giant strides in this area.

The company has also turned around what many had thought a crippling and insurmountable debt mountain.

Mobile technology, product or initiative of the year: Zingo

While the taxi service was up against stiff competition from major industry players such as Intel and Vodafone it was the initiative behind the service which saw it edge one of the toughest categories. The service plays strongly on the safety aspect of its offering, enabling single women to be put in touch with their nearest black cab, via the latest global positioning technology, from the relative safety of a club, bar, office or restaurant. The driver will then collect the passenger from outside the building and take them home - eliminating the need to stand out on the street hailing taxis or taking an unlicensed cab.

Enterprise Product of the year: ESX Server 2, VMware

ESX Server is a piece of software that carves physical servers up into smaller virtual machines, allowing multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on the same Intel-based box. By running services in secure, isolated virtual machines, VMWare software helps save money while gaining greater flexibility and control over computing resources. An important innovation in the field of grid computing, and also in a climate of tight budgets, VMware holds great promise for companies looking to use spare server resources, allowing in some cases utilisation to increase from less than five per cent to over 80 percent.

Technology PR campaign of the year: Grant Butler Coomber for Brightmail

Brightmail is the world's largest provider of anti-spam technology but while success in its domestic US market certainly paid the bills the company this year switched its focus to Europe. GBC was instrumental in arranging the Spam Summit - a joint venture between Brightmail and the All Party Internet Group. The result was an endorsement - albeit unofficial - for Brightmail as the government's anti-spam vendor of choice. This may have been an unusually partisan stance for an all party group but for Brightmail and GBC it was quite a coup. The hype GBC built around the event ensured mass media and trade press recognition for its client.

Technology advertising campaign of the year: OgilvyInteractive for IBM

The objective of the IBM Wimbledon campaign was to make the UK business community aware of IBM's solution for Wimbledon and how IBM could be a relevant partner to help address their needs. The campaign ran from 23rd June until the end of the Wimbledon 2003 championships, and made use of live data feeds from the championship to enrich the target audience's experience across an unusually large range of media. Outdoors, Ogilvy used plasma screens in major London termini to provide live scores to commuters, reaching an estimate 10 million passengers. Online, a combination of traditional animated banners with a rich MPU used multiple live data feeds to provide live scores, match results, statistics, news and webcam images on demand. In a UK first, the MPU also delivered live broadcast from Radio Wimbledon to users' desktops. The judges were unanimous in their view that this campaign was exceptional - both in the breadth of media it embraced and in particular in the innovative use of online media, demonstrating the potential of such campaigns.

Ecommerce site of the year: lastminute.com The brainchild of Martha and Brent goes from strength to strength. Multi-channel, multi-platform, multi-national - the all-conquering dot-com now provides everything for the modern online shopper. Now a one-stop shop for holiday travel, including flights, hotels and car hire, via its purchase of Holiday Autos the company has also branched out into other areas of leisure and entertainment. It won't be long before the site starts selling 'the kitchen sink' and it still looks and feels as good as any ecommerce site on the web. Voted for by readers.

Most promising technology of the year: WiMAX, The WiMAX Forum

Without broadband, IT won't be able to reach into people's lives to full effect. But broadband provision has been patchy. WiMAX is hotly tipped to change all that - a very fast, quick deploying wireless point-to-point technology that will get cities of people connected at speed. It has the potential to be as universal as television - and the power to span the world.

Outstanding Contribution to UK Technology: Access to Broadband Campaign

John Wilson and Lindsey Annison have been working slavishly to help individuals and small groups understand the hurdles they need to overcome in order to get high-speed internet access in rural and semi-rural areas. Voted for by readers.

Customer Service and Support of the Year: Symantec

In a year of yet more security scares, should we be surprised that Symantec proved popular? Voted for by our readers. In a year where users have been hit with a relentless barrage of high-profile virus and worm attacks Symantec was judged to have excelled with its online technical support and customer service operations.