IBM today announced that it has received the prestigious 'Best of Interop' award from InformationWeek Analytics and Interop. IBM received the only award in the category of Cloud Computing based on its Smart Business Development & Test for enterprises. IBM was honored at the Interop conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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The Best of Interop Awards recognize some of the world's most innovative technologies across nine major categories, and the winners are selected by award-winning editors and analysts from InformationWeek Analytics. InformationWeek Analytics is one of the leading resources for peer-driven research, providing business technology professionals with the real-world analysis and perspective they need to run better, smarter IT organizations. Interop, part of UBM TechWeb's family of global brands, is a leading business technology event series.

"Since beginning work with clients and partners around cloud computing in 2007, IBM has sought to make this model viable for enterprise and government clients -- clients that cannot compromise on security, compliance and availability," said Kristof Kloeckner, CTO Cloud Computing, IBM. "IBM is honored that our test and development cloud service has been recognized for its focus on teams of developers and for its enterprise-grade security, reliability and control."

"The Best of Interop Awards highlight the outstanding IT vendors of the industry and this year's Best of Interop is particularly exciting because of the strong competition we saw in each category," said Art Wittmann, Managing Director of InformationWeek Analytics. "The selected winners represent innovation in the marketplace and deserve recognition for helping build the energy and growth of today's IT Industry."

IBM's Smart Business Development & Test, featuring IBM Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing, allows enterprise clients to expand on internal development and test efforts with rapid access to resources through IBM's secure, scalable cloud delivery model. The average enterprise devotes up to 50 percent of its entire technology infrastructure to development and test, but typically up to 90 percent of it remains idle. IBM has seen that taking advantage of cloud computing within development and test environments can help reduce IT labor costs by 50 percent, reduce provision cycle times from weeks to minutes and improve quality, and in the process, eliminate software defects by up to 30 percent.

For more information about IBM's cloud computing portfolio, research and labs, visit www.ibm.com/cloud

  Contact:
  Darcy Hansen
  IBM Media Relations
  917-472-3692
  hansenda@us.ibm.com

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: hansenda@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE: IBM