Software Development
June 2004

The 14th Annual Jolt and Productivity Awards

Recognizing Innovation, Effectiveness and Quality: Open source and Web offerings come of age.

Fourteen Jolt Awards, 42 Productivity Awards and one Hall of Fame inductee were announced at SD West Conference and Expo’s evening gala on Wednesday, March 17, 2004. Following the witty—or painful, depending on your point of view—opening repartee of the two masters of ceremony, Technical Editor Rosalyn Lum and Editor in Chief Alexandra Weber Morales, the 14-year-long tradition of recognizing books, products and websites that have “jolted” the industry commenced once again.

Although 2003 passed in a state of economic uncertainty, certain trends came of age. Most notably, more open source offerings were nominated and recognized than in years past—including the Eclipse IDE, Hibernate and Sun’s Wireless Toolkit. Clearly, open source has become a major force, both supporting and shaping the developer community. Other innovative products, such as MindManager X5 Pro, from Larkspur, Calif.-based Mindjet, took the judges by surprise.

Growing Complexity, New Categories

This year, the number of categories expanded to recognize the increasing sophistication of software development tools in the mobile technology space. The Change and Configuration Management award was separated from the Design and Analysis category, and included security tools. Presaging an increased focus on devices, the security finalists included the competition’s first hardware contestant. Overall, more than 300 vendors nominated their products in the 14 Jolt categories, and from these nominations, 90 products were selected as finalists.

Software Development judges evaluated entrants in 14 categories: Books: General; Books: Technical; Business Integration and Data Tools; Change and Configuration Management Tools; Design and Analysis Tools; Languages and Development Environments; Libraries, Frameworks and Components; Mobile Development Tools; Project Management Tools; Security Tools; Testing Tools; Utilities; Web Development Tools; and Websites and Developer Networks. One product in each category received the coveted Jolt Award, while the three runners-up were honored with a Productivity Award plaque. —Rosalyn Lum