ServerWatch Product Excellence Award Winners

You may remember that over the past couple of months we asked you to nominate and then vote for products as part of the annual Product Excellence Awards for our friends over at ServerWatch.com. Today they revealed the winners.

The winner in the Operating System category was none other than Windows Server 2008.

We'll be honest and say it was this category that surprised us the most. Windows Server 2008 was released on February 27, qualifying for the awards program by mere days. Windows gets a lot of press, but let's face it, it's more often than not press that Microsoft doesn't want.

Yet despite competition from what is often considered hipper and cooler — a leading enterprise-class Linux, a popular up-and-coming variant, a mature Unix distro, and the cultish Leopard — Windows Server 2008 was far and away the favored operating system. If our results are any sort of barometer, the reign of Windows Server 2008 in the data center has just begun.

The other categories and winners were:

• Small Business Server (Dell PowerEdge 2970)
• Midrange Server (Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220)
• High-End Server or Mainframe (HP Integrity Superdome)
• Blade Server (HP BladeSystem C3000)
• Storage System (NetApp FAS2000 Series)
• Virtualization Platform (VMware Infrastructure 3)
• Virtualization Tool (VMLogix LabManager Manager)
• Automation or Compliance Tool (CommVault Simpana Software Suite)
• Green Initiative (The Green Grid)

Check out the article for the runners up and details on each category.