Announcing the winners of the Cloud Excellence Awards 2020
More than ever this year, the cloud has been a transformational technology - and now it's time to honour the experts
The cloud is transformational, enabling speed and scale that were undreamt of for most firms at the turn of the century. Used properly, it can lend users the flexibility to respond to changing market conditions, and the freedom to experiment with new ideas, products and tools. It can also be an incredibly efficient way to set up new infrastructure and platforms, or to remove the management overhead of parts of the IT estate the business would prefer not to keep in-house.
This year, the cloud has really lived up to that transformational promise. Thousands of companies worldwide suddenly found themselves needing to pivot a set of office-based workflows to remote ones; and the cloud enabled massive collaboration to support that trend.
The Cloud Excellence Awards exist to recognise the very best of the UK's cloud industry, from the most innovative and compelling products and vendors, through to the top use cases from end-user firms. This year we received hundreds of entries from firms that had either used the cloud for business continuity, or provided their expertise to others to help them through this difficult period.
The ability to move, react and scale quickly has never been more important than it has in 2020. Cloud-based systems and tools have enabled businesses to continue operating at unprecedented levels of efficiency, and it's not an overstatement to say that technology, and especially the cloud, has helped to keep the economy afloat this year.
Such an important tool inevitably becomes the target of cyber-crime, and we have categories celebrating the strong cloud-based defences that are in use today, as well as platforms for data management, analytics and automation.
After a long and gruelling process of shortlisting and judging, we're now ready to announce the winners of the Cloud Excellence Awards 2020. Making the shortlist this year, when the cloud saw such a massive spike in adoption, was a true achievement for every entrant - and taking home a gong is a true sign that you have what it takes to call yourself a cloud leader.
Rather than a physical ceremony, we've launched a dedicated website for the awards, where you can see our judges - including Heathrow Airport CIO Andrew Isenman, LSE CIO Laura Dawson and AXA Health Head of Data Strategy Nina Monckton - announcing the winners. Click here to visit the site - and to our finalists, good luck!