Tech leaders honoured at glittering CNET Awards

Business leaders at the forefront of the UK tech industry were honoured at a glittering award ceremony on Tuesday.

The CNET Networks UK Business Technology Awards 2008 at London's Park Lane Hilton hotel saw impressionist Jon Culshaw host a night celebrating the best of IT in 16 categories, covering financial services, retail and the public sector.

Fresh from overseeing a business transformation project at Reuters, David Lister, now at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was the winner of the CIO of the Year Award.

The IT Team of the Year, was won by investment bank Credit Suisse for taking just six months to create the Global Equities Aggregated Risk System for managing cross-entity risk management in just six months.

A group of six developers, two business analysts and a project manager won this award for developing a risk management system, a project of significant business benefit. The judges were especially impressed that the team had to persuade others their approach was the best way to proceed, and that the project is now being rolled out further.

Topping the public sector category was the Pharmaceutical Oncology Initiative Partnership, a collaboration between the Department of Health and pharmaceutical companies, with its web-based Chemotherapy Planning Oncology Resource Tool to help 33 cancer networks deliver care and introduce new drugs.

RBS came up trumps again, this time in the Financial Services Technology Project of the Year category by implementing a single computer system to hold client information previously held on separate corporate and banking systems which was praised for its ability to increase sales leads.

The Retail and Leisure Sector Technology Project of the Year saw car manufacturer Fiat take top place for its revamped website featuring 3D models, video and increased interactivity. Judges were impressed by its use of web 2.0 technology and how it delivered an "exponential increase in sales leads".

Tony Hallett, editorial director for technology and business for CNET Networks UK, said in a statement: "2008 has been another fantastic year for the UK technology industry despite the current economic climate.

"The quality of the entries we received is testament to the outstanding talent of all those involved in business and technology in the UK and proof that innovation in the industry is still going strong."

The awards were judged by experts from the technology industry and media including Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, director of the UK National Outsourcing Association; Julie Meyer, chief executive of Ariadne Capital; independent consultant Brinley Platts and John Suffolk, UK Government CIO.

Founder of the Ubuntu Foundation, Mark Shuttleworth, received the inaugural IT Community Hero of the Year award for his work on the freely available operating system. The Technology PR Campaign of the Year was scooped by Johnson King for its campaign for security company Sophos, 'The Facebook Probe - who's controlling the corporate network?' and Technology Marketing Campaign of the Year was picked up by Mason Zimbler with its campaign for Toshiba - Bringing innovation to life.