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IBM Recognizes Top Innovators on iSeries SystemsIBM and COMMON, an iSeries users group, honored five companies that are setting new standards for iSeries innovation as the winners of the first ever eServer iSeries Innovation Awards at the COMMON users conference in Chicago today.

The eServer iSeries Innovation Awards, designed to showcase end-user achievements in IT innovation using the IBM iSeries platform, recognized the following winners in these categories: U-Bix Konica Minolta ( Industry ), Kingland Systems Corporation ( Insurance ), GHY International ( Infrastructure Simplification ), ScottKlement.com ( Intellectual Solutions ) and Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising ( Invention ).

"Our clients around the world are finding more and more ways to save money, and make their businesses more flexible and resilient," said Mark Shearer, IBM iSeries general manager. "In fact, by using an iSeries platform, customers can reap the rewards of becoming an on demand business. IBM and COMMON wanted to create a program to annually recognize those leaders who are consistently striving to unleash innovation on the iSeries server to create and deliver greater business value and cutting-edge solutions."

U-Bix Konica Minolta, the largest office equipment company in New Zealand, is the winner of the Industry Solution category, for two innovative projects based on the iSeries. Project PDA enables U-Bix technicians on customer service calls to "talk" directly to the iSeries platform back in the home office using PDA devices with cellular modems. U-Bix saves time and money by allowing their PDA technicians to more easily log and track their work through this innovative technology. This solution manages service calls and inventory, acknowledges job status, and ensures billing accuracy resulting in saved time, financial resources and increased productivity. Project Sentinel relies on the iSeries server's autonomic capabilities to allow U-Bix Konica Minolta to attach customers' copiers and printers directly to the iSeries to detect issues before becoming problems. Sensors in the copies and printers alert U-Bix Konica Minolta to a potential failure, which automatically dispatches the technician or the "remote diagnostics" support desk to seize the problem before it occurs. This allows the customer to avoid downtime, and save resources and time. U-Bix Konica Minolta was nominated by Cosyn Software Limited.
Kingland Systems Corporation, a software services company providing services for the retail financial industry, the accounting industry, government agencies, and general corporate governance, received the Insurance Award. Kingland Systems' mission-critical data centers provide customers with turnkey software and hosting solutions from its primary data center in Clear Lake, Iowa. Kingland has customers in over 80 countries that rely on the company's continued service. Downtime is not an option and the iSeries platform has improved its great service with its High Availability solution. By using the iSeries platform and implementing strong procedures, Kingland is able to switch to other systems at remote sites without interruption and deliver an exceptional proven record of availability for Kingland's clients.
GHY International, one of Canada's oldest privately held customs brokerage companies providing brokerage and international trade services to clients, received the Innovation Award for Infrastructure Simplification for its "Good, Better, Best" project, which took its IT infrastructure to a superior level. With an IT staff of three, this iSeries customer consolidated a total of 14 servers including Windows servers, Linux servers, Domino on WinNT onto two iSeries platforms including existing business applications, saving the company resources that could be reinvested for future growth. After the first year of running the system, GHY was 14% under budget with nearly $100,000 of savings that could be directly attributed to the simplification process on the iSeries platform.
ScottKlement.com, a website of tutorials designed to assist iSeries users on various programs and applications, was honored with the Intellectual Award after being nominated by Partner400. Scott Klement developed a website filled with in-depth tutorials and open-source software making it possible for the average RPG programmer to access web services from leading companies, write sockets based-communications programs in RPG IV, read and write files in the IFS directly from RPG IV programs, and process XML documents from an RPG program. Available free of charge to iSeries users, ScottKlement.com enables the iSeries server to be a more viable player in an on demand world while giving users access to additional software applications, saving money and delivering better satisfaction of IT infrastructure.
The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, a two-year accredited, private college with campuses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Orange County, Calif., received the Invention Award, given to the iSeries end user demonstrating best practices in innovation and custom deployments. FIDM arms its students with the creative tools needed for their industry, as well as career advice and access to job opportunities. To assist in getting employment information to students, FIDM created a secure online site for industry contacts to post job opportunities with FIDM's Career Development and Placement Center at http://www.fidm.com. Last year, FIDM expanded this job service to more than 20,000 alumni who can search posted jobs using various search criteria via the Internet through the FIDM Portal, http://myfidm.fidm.edu, powered by the iSeries platform. Now, alumni have unlimited access to the search vehicle, freeing up on-site career counselors for current students.
"The entries we received demonstrate the visions that end users are executing on the iSeries platform and we believe will spark far reaching innovation on existing and new iSeries systems in the coming months and years," said Beverly Russell, COMMON board president.

Winners, honored last night at an awards ceremony hosted by Mark Shearer, IBM eServer iSeries general manager, and Beverly Russell, COMMON board president, were chosen by a panel of 25 judges that included IT-industry leaders, analysts, and IBM and COMMON executives. Current IBM iSeries customers could be nominated by an IBM Business Partner, IBM employee or themselves. Winners represent the United States, Canada and New Zealand, and were chosen from nearly 60 entries submitted. The awards program will be expanded to the European COMMON conference in June.

For more information on the awards, log onto: http://www.ibm.com/eserver/iseries/innovation/awards/

About COMMON
COMMON is the world's largest users group of IBM and IBM-compatible Information Technology users. The organization comprises more than 4,000 individual and corporate members. They represent more than 22,000 IT professionals involved with the IBM iSeries, i5/OS, OS/400 and related solutions. For more information about COMMON, visit http://www.common.org.

About the IBM eServer iSeries
The IBM iSeries system is a tightly integrated system including hardware, middleware, storage and security. iSeries systems can run i5/OS, Windows ( via an IXA or IXS ), Linux and AIX operating environments simultaneously so clients can reinvest those savings to grow their business. Business partners and solutions providers of all sizes drive iSeries server success by building, selling and deploying over 6,400 of the world's most popular business applications for their clients on the iSeries platform.

About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key IBM Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of on demand business. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com.

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The following are either trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries or both: IBM, the IBM e-business logo, eServer, i5/OS, iSeries. All others are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Statements concerning IBM's future development plans and schedules are made for planning purposes only, and are subject to change or withdrawal without notice.

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