Storries III - Review

The Storries III – The best ever!

This year has been a record-breaking one for the Storage Awards.

More nominations than ever before, 140-plus more guests than in 2005 and, more importantly, the readership of Storage magazine voted in their droves. In excess of 4,000 readers voted for their favourite products and companies.

The evening started with a champagne reception (sponsored by Fujifilm), which set the tone for the evening. By 8pm, there had been enough champagne consumed to sink the nearby HMS Belfast.

Old friends mingled with new, in what has become the storage industry’s premier networking event.

By the time desert was served, compere Roy Walker was entertaining the storage industry’s finest with his own unique brand of offbeat humour, often resulting in raucous laughter.

When Roy had finished his set, he was joined on stage by Stuart Leigh (Storage magazine’s publisher) and they rattled through the awards, with Roy continuing to entertain at each and every turn. The most notable winners were Sun-StorageTek (two awards), Nexsan (three awards) and NetApp, which took the 2006 accolade of ‘Storage Company of the Year’. A full list of winners can be found at the end of this report.

Once the Storage Awards were finished, and winners congratulated, the serious business of networking resumed and carried on until way after carriages at 1am, with one of the highlights being our editor doing his finest John Travolta impersonation and one merry little soul leaving the bar at 7.00am (not necessarily the same person!) A party worthy of the storage industry.
Well done to everyone for making this such a special night – and, of course, to all of our winners, across all of the categories. We look forward to welcoming you to the 2007 Storage Awards, The Storries IV, where, once again, the readers of Storage magazine will reward the outstanding products and services for which our industry has become a byword.

Storage Magazine would like to take this opportunity to thank the Storries III sponsors - Fujifilm, Hammer and EqualLogic - with category sponsorship from AMCC, Easy Software and Symantec.

Archiving Software Product of the year.

Easy Software – Easy Enterprise .x

Archiving Format of the year

Quantum - DLTSage WORM

Backup Software Product of the year

Symantec - Backup Exec 10d

Backup Hardware Product of the year

Overland – REO 9000

Disk Product of the year

Nexsan - SATABeast

NAS Product of the year

Network Appliance – Nearstore R200

SAN Product of the year

EqualLogic – PS300E

Connectivity Product of the year

AMCC Storage – 9550SX – 16ML

ILM Provider of the year

Sun StorageTek

Compliance Product of the year

EMC – Centera

Service Company of the year

NCE Computer Group

Tape Product of the year

Sony – AIT2 Turbo SATA Drive

Security Product of the year

Nexsan - Assureon

Storage Reseller of the year

Posetiv

Storage Distributor of the year

Hammer PLC

Editors Choice

Sun – StorageTek SL500

Storage Solution of the year

Datacore/NCE/Nexsan – Honda F1 Racing Team

Storage Product of the year

Computer Associates – BrightStor ARCserve r11.5

Storage Company of the year

Network Appliance