The sixth year of the awards, entitled 'Gems of Asia', saw 25 companies receive awards in 31 categories and many were recognised for their substantial growth and profitability in the past year.
The awards recognise outstanding performance and leadership by companies within the ICT industry in the Asia Pacific that have made the most significant impact on the market in 2008. The criteria for winning included a variety of actual market performance indicators, including revenue growth, market share and growth in market share, leadership in product innovation, breadth of products and solutions, major customer acquisitions, and business and market strategy, among other category-specific criteria.
Frost & Sullivan's senior vice president, ICT practice, Asia Pacific, Nitin Bhat, told the dinner audience that the 20 independent judges felt there were some things the winners had in common.
These included the relentless pursuit of a new vision, a focus on customers, a determination to identify new market opportunities, plus a focus on the retention and satisfaction of existing customers.
Key award winners
Some key award winners included:
• Business Intelligence (BI) Vendor of the Year: SAS, which spent 22 per cent of its 2008 revenue on research and development;
• Enterprise Telephony Vendor of the Year, Carrier Data Infrastructure Vendor of the Year: Cisco Systems, which had outstanding growth in revenue and market share;
• Unified Communications Vendor of the Year: Microsoft
• Managed Service Provider of the Year, Data Communications Service Provider of the Year: Orange Business Services;
• Most Innovative Application of the Year: Thailand firm dtac for a mobile banking application that enables users to check balances, carry out transactions and pay bills;
• Vendor of the Year, Wireless Infrastructure Vendor of the Year, Broadband Equipment Vendor of the Year; Huawei
• Service Provider of the Year: Bharti Airtel, which enjoyed 49 per cent year-on-year growth;
• Best Telecom Group: Axiata Group (formerly known as TM International) which has 25,000 employees in 10 countries and more than 90 million customers.
• 3G Wireless Infrastructure Vendor of the year, Telecom Managed Service Provider of the Year, Ericsson.
Companies that were first-time award winners included Nokia Siemens Networks, which won Telecom OSS Vendor of the Year, Infinera, a manufacturer of high capacity optical transmission equipment, which was awarded the Most Promising Vendor of the Year and Sun Cellular from the Philippines, which won the Most Promising Service Provider of the Year award.