For many in IT, 2009 was a nuclear winter, with resources stripped away as companies struggled to survive. Yet many were tasked with using IT to increase the company's efficiency, enter the few new growth markets, or fix a fundamental problem that threatened the company's ability to stay in business.
Some technology leaders rose to the challenge, despite the lack of resources. That's a common situation for many of this year's InfoWorld CTO 25 Award winners. One even became CEO as a result.
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Of course, not every company was in make-or-break mode, and several CTO 25 winners demonstrated the value of innovation in technology and management in any economy.
So, without further ado, here are the 2010 InfoWorld CTO 25 winners, in alphabetical order. You can read what each one did to merit the award on the pages that follow.
- Scott Baynes, CTO, Netgain: A virtualization change-out with several twists
- Brian Beck, IT director, Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation: Using desktop virtualization to give more students PC access
- Amy Bourne, vice president of technology development, Centro: Revitalizing a broken IT staff -- just in time for a make-or-break business launch
- Chris Brady, CIO, Dealer Services: Predictive technology avoids the recession's impact
- Aris Buinevicius, CTO, ChannelAdvisor: Making a BI consolidation happen in a live environment
- John Burke, CIO, Ambit Energy: Using smart meters to lower energy costs for credit-challenged users
- Chad Burney, assistant vice president for IT, COCC: Bringing SSDs into the core of the data center
- Tom Conophy, CIO, InterContinental Hotels Group: Driving a hotel group to financial and energy efficiency
- Phiroz P. Darukhanavala, CTO, BP: Immersive 3-D improves training and operations
- Scott Dillon, head of technology infrastructure services, Wells Fargo & Co.: Standardizing while making a major merger work
- Mark Friedgan, CIO, Enova Financial: Switching to open source for lower costs, increased flexibility
- Garth Gibson, CTO, Panasas: Parallelizing NFS file sharing
- Kris Herrin, CTO, Heartland Payment Systems: Restoring a company's faith in technology -- and in IT
- Dennis Hodges, CIO, Inteva Products: Just one year to put an IT infrastructure in place -- and cut costs in half
- Jason Huggins, co-founder, Sauce Labs: Improving automation testing
- Irfan Khan, CTO, Sybase: Listening to customers for real -- and reaping the rewards
- Amit Klein, CTO, Trusteer: Fixing security flaws in vendor applications and browsers
- Marc B. Manza, CTO, Passlogix: Solving the single sign-on challenge
- Ram Mohan, CTO, Afilias: Making the Internet more secure for everyone
- Paresh Nagda, CTO, Navman Wireless: Automating language localization to increase business reach
- Trent Parkhill, vice president of IT, Haley & Aldrich: Connecting staff to the information they need
- Michael Raneri, CEO, Zecco Holdings: Drastic cuts and just one shot to save the company made this CIO the CEO
- Ken Silva, CTO, VeriSign: An extreme data center reduction also leads to a new security approach
- Ajay Waghray, CIO, Verizon Wireless: Merging two companies -- and two IT teams
- Aris Zakinthinos, CTO, I Love Rewards: A new CTO revamps his infrastructure for growth in just months