What do an energy company in Alabama, the Finnish
government and a manufacturer and distributor of lumber products
have in common?
They all came away as winners at this year's Mobile Impact
Awards, presented last week at the Yankee Group Mobilizing the
Enterprise Summit in Boston.
The Mobile Enterprise Alliance (MEA), is a global advocacy group
promoting the business benefits of workforce mobility to enterprise
end users and decision makers. The prestigious Mobile Impact Awards
honour leading enterprises for successful and innovative
deployments of mobile enterprise solutions that successfully
balance technology investments with business objectives.
Among the notable award recipients the Energen Corporation,
taking the top spot in the Mobile Management category. The company
needed a solution to help manage Blackberry devices for large teams
of field personnel who depend on accessing corporate data for
critical business activities and for executives that use devices
for wireless e-mail.
"Our field personnel are out there managing gas lines and doing
safety inspections," said Brad Anderson, Windows system
administrator. Anderson's team valued the importance of
around-the-clock service for their internal customers' needs, but
they also valued their own quality of life. They needed a solution
that enabled them to work effectively without being tied to a
desktop computer.
Other winners included the Tennant Company, which took first
place honours in the Field Service & Support category. The
Finnish Government Information Management Unit took the award for
Extended Enterprise Computing & Connectivity; Kelleher
Corporation won for Sales Force Enablement; Northwestern Memorial
Hospital won in the Mobile Office Solution category; and Duke
University Medical Center captured the prize in the Mobile Security
category.
Decided by a panel of industry experts, including
SearchMobileComputing.com managing editor Kara Gattine, the awards
aim to recognise the year's best in mobile technology deployments
by companies and organisations worldwide.
Daniel Taylor, the MEA's managing director, said in a statement,
"Each year, our awards program grows stronger with better and
better case studies from successful mobile enterprise deployments.
These organisations define the state of the art for enterprise
mobility in 2006."