Tesco CIO scoops top honour at CNET UK Awards

Tesco IT chief Colin Cobain scooped the CIO of the Year award at the fifth annual CNET Networks UK Business Technology awards last night.

The retailer's CIO fought off strong competition for the award from a shortlist including Neil Cameron of Unilever, Trevor Didcock of The AA, Simon Jennings of Oxfam and David Lister of Reuters.

Other innovative users of technology were honoured at the event, run by CNET Networks, publisher of silicon.com.

Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust won the Public Sector Technology Project of the Year award, with its Building a 21st Century Enterprise Infrastructure, against a tough field including organisations from Birmingham, Devon, Durham and Humberside.

In the Financial Services category, online lending market place Zopa won Technology Project of the Year for its consumer credit act signing system, beating off competition from more established heavyweights such as Credit Suisse.

The honours for Retail and Leisure project of the year went to Betfair for its work on the Flywheel project.

And the winner of the Outstanding Contribution to the UK Technology Industry was silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane, recognised for his contribution to the field of international communications.

Other winners included IBM which won the Green Initiative of the Year for its Big Green project that saw the company pledge $1bn back in May to double computing capacity without an increase in power consumption.

ABN Amro's London Message Hub project was the winner of the IT Services Technology Project of the Year, while iPass won Mobile Product of the Year for its Mobile Office app.

The UK internet innovation of the year was won by social networking site Bebo.

The other winners were:

Cisco's TelePresence for Enterprise Hardware Product of the Year.

1E's NightWatchman v5 for Enterprise Software Product of the Year.

Zeus Technology (ZXTM VA - Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager Virtual Appliance) for Networking Product of the Year.

PatchLink-SecureWave (Sanctuary 4.1) for Security Product of the Year.

5i and CNT for Technology Partnership of the Year.

Tidalwave's Canon UK 'Diet' Campaign for UK Technology Marketing Campaign of the Year.

Octane PR for the 'Making Postini the Fastest Growing Security Start-Up in Europe' campaign for UK Technology PR campaign of the year.

More information on the awards, including the judges, can be found here.