Given out by the Software & Information Industry Association, awards are intended to recognize "industry excellence," SIIA said. Award winners are being announced at an SIAA event in San Francisco. Categories range from Best Asset Management Solution, won by Flexera Software with its FlexNet Manager Suite for Enterprises, to Best Security Solution, won by Venafi Director, and Best Web Services Solution, awarded to Dell Boomi for its Atomsphere product.

Tying for Best Cloud Application/Service were Google Apps for Government, Keynote Cloud Application Perspective, and Scribe Online. Google Apps for Government offers a suite of productivity applications, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, and Video, with government-level security. "All the apps and all the data [are] stored in servers that are only used by government agencies," said Google representative Tim Drinan. Among clients are the cites of Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, as well as states such as Wyoming and Colorado and the federal General Services Administration, Drinan said. "The advantage in general of moving to the cloud is [users] don't have to maintain that software or services on premise. Everything is delivered in the browser."

Keynote Cloud Application Perspective provides SaaS-based performance-monitoring for Web applications. "The key differentiator here is our service is looking at [performance] from the end-user perspective," said Aaron Rudger, Keynote product marketing manager.

A tie also occurred in the Best Integration Solution category, with Operative's Operative.One and Pervasive Software's Pervasive Data Integrator knotted up.