INFOWORLD IN THE PAST RAN its influential Readers' Choice Awards every year, but for the past few years, the awards were dropped. This issue marks the awards' return in grand style. Finalists for the awards were nominated by InfoWorld editors, writers, and analysts, and then readers were asked to vote online for their favorites. To make sure that the results were unbiased and unsullied by vote tampering, we asked voters to use their subscription numbers to identify themselves, and each subscription number could vote only once.

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InfoWorld readers are known for their technological acumen, and subsequently the results of the voting are very revealing. Some choices you made were resounding and clear, but others in more detailed technical categories were close, with winners decided by only a fraction. In the Knowledge Management/Business Intelligence category, for example, BusinessObjects 2000 edged Cognos Platform for EBI by 25 percent to 23 percent; even the lowest finisher, Information Builders WebFocus BI Suite, received 16 percent of the vote.

In the bigger categories, some clear trends emerged. Napster won Company of the Year not because of its success but because of how it affected the law and the e-business market for everyone. Runners-up IBM and Sun, however, were chosen more for their commercial success and product offerings than for their influence on the direction of the industry. Alan Greenspan won Person of the Year, reflecting the importance that the overall economy has on IT, and vice versa. The Flop of the Year, the pure-play dot-coms, is also an important lesson in recent economic history. But just as interesting is that the runners-up were also economic factors such as the stock market and energy deregulation, with the exception of the company everyone loves to hate, represented by Microsoft Windows 2000.

Hype of the Year, however, didn't have a clear winner. Obviously there was more than enough hot air to go around during the past year, with Bluetooth only just beating out the Death of Microsoft, peer-to-peer, Windows 2000, and the New Economy in your minds.

Although IBM didn't win as Company of the Year, different divisions cleaned up in five different categories. WebSphere in particular proved very popular with InfoWorld readers as it won Application Integration Tool of the Year with 52 percent of the vote, Enterprise Application of the Year with 46 percent of the vote, and E-commerce Product of the Year with 53 percent of the vote -- all landslide victories. The company itself, or at least the Global Services division, wasn't far behind, winning as Outsourcer of the Year with 53 percent of the vote and Consulting Service of the Year with 46 percent of the vote -- both also landslides.

XML won the standards battle with ease, gaining recognition for Most Important Standard of the Year with 59 percent of the vote, beating out Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) with 22 percent in second place, and Application Development Technology of the Year with 39 percent over J2EE again, which garnered a much closer 31 percent. Not surprisingly, J2EE won an award itself for Infrastructure Product of the Year, beating out Cisco's Long-Reach Ethernet technology.

Other clear winners you voted for included Verio as ASP (application service provider) of the Year, which received 48 percent of the vote, 30 percent clear of the following pack. However, ISP of the Year was a closer call: AT&T WorldNet garnered 35 percent of your votes to 31 percent for UUNet and a surprising 23 percent for America Online. Your pick for Hosting Center of the Year was also a resounding choice: Qwest with 37 percent of the vote, trailed by Exodus at 21 percent.

Although IBM goes home with a package of trophies, it wasn't the only multiple winner in e-commerce categories. Oracle was selected as E-business Application of the Year with a hefty 49 percent of your votes, far ahead of Ariba in second place. Oracle also, unsurprisingly, claimed Database Product of the Year in the category with the fewest nominations: Oracle 9i snared 49 percent of the vote, SQL Server 2000 had 34 percent, and IBM DB2 Universal Database 7 received 17 percent.

Individual winners in more focussed e-commerce application categories were harder to pick, with the exception of CRM (customer relationship management) Product of the Year. Siebel won that award with 36 percent of the vote and PeopleSoft Vantive was in second place with 23 percent. Content Management Product of the Year was a much closer race with BroadVision One-to-One Publishing edging out Interwoven Teamsite 28 percent to 25 percent. Collaboration/Messaging Product of the Year was a hotly contested category with AOL IM garnering 32 percent of the vote for first place over MS Outlook and Lotus Notes with 23 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

Hardware categories were all close races, with the exception of Server Hardware of the Year. Here Sun's Fire 280R won the title with 37 percent of the vote over the IBM pSeries S80 and the Hewlett-Packard 9000 Superdome. Business System of the Year was won by the Dell Latitude line with 28 percent of the votes over the IBM ThinkPad line and the Sun Ultra 80 line, both with 23 percent. Handheld Product of the Year was both a surprise and a landslide for the Palm VIIx, which got 46 percent of the vote to the Compaq iPAQ's 29 percent and the RIM BlackBerry trailing with 19 percent.

Security Product of the Year was a clear choice in your minds: Entercept Security Technologies Entercept got 53 percent of the votes to ISS SAFESuite with 33 percent. Networking Product of the Year was extremely tight: iVision NetCalibrate won with 33 percent to NetIQ Chariot at 31 percent and Network Instruments Observer 7.0 at 27 percent. Storage Product of the Year was EMC High Road software with 37 percent of the vote.

The remaining two categories are two of the most personal and contentious on the list, and they resulted in close races: Multimedia Product of the Year was won by Macromedia Flash Generator with 33 percent of the votes over Apple Quicktime with 28 percent. The last category was essentially a two-horse race from the start: Linux 2.4 won Operating System of the Year with 43 percent of the votes over Windows 2000 with 33 percent.

When InfoWorld editors looked over the results, they were both surprised and pleased to see how much close attention our readers had paid to the news of the past year and the business climate in making their decisions, while remaining very clear and concrete about the value of the best technological solutions. Those of you interested in the full results will find them online.