Berners-Lee and innovators walk away with CNET UK Awards gongs

The CNET Networks UK Technology Awards took place last night and saw some high-profile winners, including an Outstanding Contribution award to father of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the title of CIO of the Year going to the London Stock Exchange's David Lester.

CNET UK is the publisher of silicon.com.

A packed gala dinner and ceremony at the Park Lane Hotel in London saw Red Hat walk away with the Enterprise Technology Product of the Year for its desktop operating system - now considered mature and a rival to Windows by the panel of judges.

Capgemini won Integrator/Outsourcer of the Year, a tip of the hat to the company that wrested away the huge Aspire contract from EDS at the Inland Revenue.

Meanwhile, Mobile Product or Initiative of the Year saw a shock winner in the form of Parkmobile UK, a company that has from a modest start in Putney, west London, pioneered using a mix of wireless technologies including GPRS and RFID to handle parking voucher buying and checking.

VMware walked away with Most Promising Technology of the year.

But it was arguably the individual winners whose acceptance speeches will be remembered the longest.

Speaking via video from his office at MIT, Berners-Lee spoke of the next stage in the development of the web, which he predicts will be focused on increased mobility and the ability to surf simply using one's voice, maybe even without any type display.

David Lester of the LSE spoke of the big turnaround in the exchange's fortunes since the start of the millennium. The panel of judges especially liked the way he can run his department of 400 or so staff as a profit centre - certainly unusual for most IT operations - and the changes he has made within an organisationally and technologically complex business.

The other winners, across a diverse set of categories all with strong shortlists, were:

Nortel Networks' Multimedia Communications Server for Telecoms Product or Service of the Year.

BlackSpider Technologies (BlackSpider MailControl) for Security Product of the Year.

Connected Corporation (Connected ArchiveStore/EM) for Storage Product of the Year.

Brands2Life for the Clearswift 'From Outsider to Insider' campaign in the PR Campaign of the Year category.

Worth for the Websense UK Ltd 'Monsters' campaign in the Technology Marketing category.

More information on the awards, including who sat in judgement, can be found here.