Opal Future Technologies www.opaltech.co.il
Consolidate Eight Pension Funds Using Portal
Project Lead: Alex Libis, Information and Data Security Manager
Project Description: The company consolidated management and CRM for eight separate pension funds, each with its own technology base, transforming a chaotic constellation of functionalities into an opportunity to revolutionize both code and customer service. [ Read the full Opal finalist profile | See Top 10 Finalists slideshow ]
Industry: Financial Services

Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General www.attorneygeneral.gov
Server and Storage Virtualization
Project Lead: George White, Chief Information Officer
Project Description: To better keep up with the needs of the agency, the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General launched a comprehensive virtualization project, replacing 150 stand-alone servers with 40 Dell blade servers, virtualized using VMware. Stand-alone disk arrays were also replaced with a high-capacity NetApp SAN, combining both Fibre Channel and iSCSI. All told, the project achieved a 65 percent reduction in total cost of ownership, along with an estimated annual savings of $165,000 in support costs and more than $100,000 in storage service licensing.
Industry: Government

Purdue University www.itap.purdue.edu
Server Virtualization
Project Lead: Mike Rubesch, Director of IT Infrastructure Systems
Project Description: Facing a space and resource crisis, Purdue University virtualized 140 servers onto three HP DL-585 physical machines, reducing overall power usage by 84 percent. Taking up a tenth of its previous footprint, the VMware-based environment is expected to reduce facilities costs by $75,000 per year and hardware costs by $250,000 annually.
Industry: Education

Raymond James Financial www.raymondjames.com
Centralized Document Management
Project Lead: Sue Desiderio, Manager, Software Engineering
Project Description: Raymond James Financial, a Florida-based diversified holding company, built a customized, Web-based document management system to establish a centralized repository for all IT project documents and artifacts. Built using Borland StarTeam as a foundation, StarPoint was integrated with Microsoft SharePoint to manage technical change requests and ensure compliance with regulatory mandates. The system also acts as a code repository for more than 450 IT projects in support of the firm's 1.6 million financial accounts throughout the world.
Industry: Financial Services

Sam Houston State University www.shsu.edu
Open Source VoIP
Project Lead: Aaron Daniel, Senior Voice Analyst
Project Description: Sam Houston State University migrated 6,000-plus extensions from Cisco CallManager to Asterisk, eliminating phone licensing costs and increasing customization control and security in the process. Open source VoIP functionality is spread across six redundant Dell servers and has resulted in per-phone cost savings of approximately 66 percent.
Industry: Education

Scarborough Building Society www.scarboroughbs.co.uk
Mainframe and Database Migration
Project Lead: Kevin Moran, IT Director
Project Description: Scarborough's IT group migrated the building society's legacy IDMS database and applications to Microsoft SQL Sever 2005 and the .Net Framework as part of a comprehensive modernization effort that included replacing a Fujitsu mainframe with Windows Server 2003 systems. More than a million lines of code were migrated to .Net, including homegrown line-of-business applications for mortgage and savings account administration, mortgage insurance renewals, and branch cashiering.
Industry: Financial Services