The arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022 and the ensuing cascade of large language models ensured that 2023 will forever be known as the year of generative AI (GenAI). With amazing speed, generative AI has rippled across the entire information technology landscape—from software development and devops tools, to data management platforms and analytics tools, to cloud security, compliance, and governance solutions.We would expect our leading technology providers to jump on innovations like generative AI to make their products easier to use, more powerful, and more automated. And this is certainly true of this year’s candidates for InfoWorld’s Technology of the Year Awards. Among the 52 finalists and 20 winners of our 2023 awards, many are harnessing artificial intelligence to redefine their product categories.The InfoWorld Technology of the Year Awards recognize the best and most innovative products in AI and machine learning, business intelligence (BI) and analytics, cloud computing, containers, data management, devops, and software development. Read on to meet our finalists and winners, or download the PDF edition below. download
Read about the year’s best and most innovative products in AI, analytics, cloud, containers, data management, databases, devops, and software development. Download our special awards issue PDF. InfoWorld
AI and Machine Learning: DevelopmentFinalists
- Quantiphi baioniq
- SAS Viya
- Wallaroo.AI ML Workload Orchestration
WinnerSAS Viya IDGFrom the winnerSAS Viya is a cloud-native analytics and AI platform that not only fulfills the promise of AI, but also brings you speed and productivity you never imagined possible. SAS Viya enables you to scale cost-effectively, increase productivity, and innovate faster, backed by trust and transparency. It makes it possible to integrate teams and technology, enabling all users to work together successfully.AI-based automation and embedded best practices align to the needs and talents of your team, connecting all aspects of the AI and analytics life cycle and helping turn critical questions into trusted decisions.From the judges
Based on the provided benchmark data, SAS Viya used 87% less computing when running “like” models against linear, logistic, random forest, and gradient boosting algorithms.
When training models, SAS Viya appears ahead of the competition in enhanced efficiency, cost reduction, scalability of models, and closing the time-to-insights gap.
AI and Machine Learning: ApplicationsFinalists
- Algolia NeuralSearch
- Glean
- UiPath Business Automation Platform
WinnerGlean IDGFrom the winnerWith workplace information fragmented across tools like chat, email, document repositories, bug tracking tools, customer support systems, and internal wikis, it’s no surprise that finding the right information you need to accomplish your goals can be time-consuming and difficult.Glean is an AI-powered enterprise search platform that helps you find and discover exactly the information you need right when you need it. Glean searches all of your apps across your entire company, understanding context, language, behavior, and relationships with others to find personalized answers to your questions. It surfaces knowledge and makes connections with the people who can help, so you and your team never miss a thing.From the judges
The context for large language models here (enterprise search, knowledge base creation) is novel and useful. … It’s a genuinely useful application for LLMs, using sources of data in enterprise settings as contextual hints (e.g., GitHub vs. Slack).
BI and AnalyticsFinalists
- AnswerRocket Max
- Celonis Execution Management System
- Kyvos Insights
WinnerAnswerRocket Max IDGFrom the winnerAnswerRocket is an augmented analytics platform created on the idea that data and analytics should be accessible to all. By leveraging AI and ML technology, AnswerRocket empowers customers around the world to confidently explore, analyze, and generate insights from their enterprise data. AnswerRocket’s RocketSkills allows users to leverage purpose-built advanced analytics modules that automate analysis for common use cases such as customer churn, SKU rationalization, and brand performance in minutes. RocketSkills uses AI and ML to execute workflows, produce decks, and compose data stories. The platform eliminates information barriers and democratizes data analytics within organizations by providing easily understandable data analysis.From the judges
A practical, highly capable use of GenAI that should deliver significant, tangible benefits by enabling business users to rapidly and easily gain analytical insights.
Cloud Compliance and GovernanceFinalists
- Clumio Protect
- LightBeam PrivacyOps
- Noname Posture Management
WinnerClumio Protect IDGFrom the winnerEvery company in the world has some data that they simply cannot afford to lose. Clumio helps companies ensure that this data is safe, compliant, and access-controlled. Regardless of the source—databases powering applications, data lakes powering AI, or blocks and files powering business systems—Clumio helps its resident data stay immutable and resilient against cyberthreats, operational disruptions, and outages.From the judges
Cloud-native backup with fast restore … highly granular restore operations for flexible business continuity.
Cloud Cost ManagementFinalists
- Hyperglance
- Kubecost
- Unravel Platform
WinnerKubecost IDGFrom the winnerKubecost is a platform that provides real-time cost visibility and insights for developer and finops teams using Kubernetes. With Kubecost’s Kubernetes-related cloud cost monitoring, management, and optimization illuminating unnecessary overspend, Kubecost’s solution enables customers to reduce their cloud costs by as much as 70% in many cases—and keep those costs continually optimized. Importantly, customers reduce Kubernetes spending without impacting application performance. Kubecost is designed from the ground up for Kubernetes and the cloud-native ecosystem. It is tightly integrated within other technologies that are part of that ecosystem, and partnered with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.From the judges
Kubecost has firmly established itself as the de facto standard for measuring the cost of Kubernetes infrastructure, from start-ups to large corporations. There isn’t a clear alternative.”
Cloud SecurityFinalists
- CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security
- Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud
- Sysdig Secure
WinnerSysdig Secure IDGFrom the winnerThe industry has been overwhelmed with fragmented solutions and theories on how to approach cloud security—until Sysdig Secure. Sysdig is a game-changing cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) solution that is designed to provide companies with comprehensive security for cloud-native applications, containers, and orchestration platforms. Sysdig is the first CNAPP solution to use insight from run time to make better-informed decisions during the build/prevention phase through production. Sysdig offers a unified platform that combines multiple security functionalities, enabling enhanced security postures and unrivaled vulnerability prioritization, as well as real-time visibility into environments to proactively detect and respond to security threats, anomalies, and potential breaches.From the judges
Interesting technology offering security at run time and using that to inform security earlier in the development life cycle.
Containers Finalists
- D2iQ DKP
- io Gloo Platform
- Spectro Cloud Palette
WinnerGloo Platform IDGFrom the winnerGloo Platform is the industry’s leading application networking platform, combining service mesh, API gateway, and multicloud networking into a unified platform that can enable microservice applications across any cloud. Devops and platform engineering teams strive to reduce complexity to enable greater productivity. Gloo Platform addresses that complexity reduction through the integration of leading open-source technologies into a single modular platform that addresses API management, zero-trust security, scaling microservices, multicloud networking, and industry compliance. Gloo Platform delivers a unified platform that seamlessly integrates into existing devops and platform engineering environments through a unified control plane, unified API, and highly automated operations framework.From the judges
Gloo provides an excellent API and microservices management solution that is an essential part of any modern development organization. The overall functionality of the product is quite good and provides features that fit nearly all customers’ needs.
Data Management: GovernanceFinalists
- Fivetran Metadata API
- Integral Platform
- Teleskope
WinnerTeleskope IDGFrom the winnerTeleskope is a modern data protection platform that automates data security, privacy, and compliance at scale to help organizations comply with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. The high-performance platform can, within minutes, seamlessly monitor cloud and SaaS data stores to provide a comprehensive inventory of assets—including hidden ones—as well as their security and compliance risks. Its advanced classification engine, powered by a large language model and rules engine, is able to adapt to reach unique data stores—identifying sensitive data and its associated personas such as employees or customers.From the judges
Teleskope can help companies that are most exposed to compliance mandates better cope with regulatory requirements, thanks to innovative use of LLM technology.
Data Management: IntegrationFinalists
- Airbyte Open Source and Airbyte Cloud
- Cleo Integration Cloud
- SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform
WinnerSnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform IDGFrom the winnerOur vision is to continually remove the friction from integration by significantly improving the ease and speed of integration via SnapGPT, the industry’s first and only generative AI-driven integration solution. SnapGPT accelerates business transformation by enabling citizen developers and IT professionals to streamline data pipeline and integration workflow development using a natural language, ChatGPT-like interface. SnapGPT allows users to generate fully functional integrations, synthetic test data, and complex SQL queries. The solution also offers the ability to fine-tune data mapping and transformations. Users can ask SnapGPT for help creating integrations, choosing connectors, pre-built templates, or patterns for their use case, or describing/documenting existing integrations.From the judges
Nice use of generative AI. Linking systems together is complex and therefore making this easier is a bonus. This will drive results.
Data Management: PipelinesFinalists
- Acceldata Data Observability Platform
- Ascend Data Pipeline Automation Platform
- Matillion Data Productivity Cloud
WinnerAcceldata Data Observability Platform IDGFrom the winnerThe Acceldata Data Observability Platform is an enterprise data observability platform for the modern data stack. The platform provides comprehensive visibility, giving data teams the real-time information they need to identify and prevent issues and make data stacks reliable. The Acceldata Data Observability Platform supports a wide range of data sources such as Snowflake, Databricks, Hadoop, Amazon Athena, Amazon Redshift, Azure Data Lake, Google BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. The Acceldata platform provides insights into compute and infrastructure, reliability, pipelines, and users.From the judges
Support for a broad variety of data platforms. … powerful analysis of events and behavior in multi-stage pipelines. … some open-source components.”
Data Management: StreamingFinalists
- Confluent Cloud
- Redpanda
WinnerConfluent Cloud IDGFrom the winnerConfluent Cloud is the only fully managed, cloud-native data streaming platform. Built and operated by the original creators of Apache Kafka, Confluent Cloud makes running Kafka almost effortless, whether companies are running a few applications or using it as a central nervous system that acts as the source of truth for all data. Confluent Cloud enables customers to shift away from point-in-time batch processing, allowing them to utilize real-time data from a continuous stream of events. With Confluent Cloud, organizations can harness the full power of Apache Kafka while avoiding the headaches of infrastructure management and can focus on what matters most: driving business value for customers and stakeholders.From the judges
The ability to simplify that task of managing an open-source system is achieved with Confluent Cloud and done while still allowing the solution to be managed and scalable.
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DatabasesFinalists
- DataStax Astra DB
- Imply Polaris
- SingleStore SingleStoreDB
WinnerSingleStore SingleStoreDB IDGFrom the winnerSingleStore Kai (with MongoDB compatibility) turbocharges analytics on JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data and enables vector-based similarity searches for MongoDB applications. This is important as JSON data is one of the most prevalent data types in the modern world, yet NoSQL applications like MongoDB are not able to quickly do analytics on this data. Specifically, SingleStoreDB supports vectors and fast vector similarity search using dot_product and euclidean_distance functions. And with the launch of SingleStore Kai, developers can now utilize the vector and AI capabilities on JSON collections within MongoDB. Developers who are familiar with MongoDB can easily power fast analytics on SingleStoreDB without having to learn a new set of tools or APIs—and can continue to use the same MongoDB tools, drivers, skill sets, and ecosystem their customers are most familiar with.From the judges
SingleStoreDB offers tremendous performance for a number of different workload types. This is a very innovative product that builds from the current software stack, while providing important new functionality that has clear value to the business.
Devops: DeliveryFinalists
- Onfleet
- Mirantis Lagoon
WinnerOnfleet IDGFrom the winnerOnfleet’s platform helps companies manage deliveries and capture the analytics they need to grow their business. Onfleet’s last-mile delivery management software solution helps customers achieve cost reduction, efficiency, and sustainability objectives that become critical as demand for delivery increases. Onfleet is the preferred delivery management software solution for companies wanting to provide a superior delivery experience while maximizing efficiencies. We are known for our comprehensive yet easy-to-use solution, powerful reporting and analytics, and interoperability with other technologies.From the judges
Great real-time integrated technology for last-mile delivery, showing strong business impact.
Devops: ObservabilityFinalists
- Grafana Cloud
- Honeycomb Observability Platform
WinnerHoneycomb Observability Platform IDGFrom the winnerHoneycomb’s platform aims to ease the burden of building and monitoring complex software. With Honeycomb, organizations spend less time debugging and firefighting so they can focus on what really matters—innovating and delivering new features for better experiences. This year, Honeycomb launched Query Assistant, the first fully executing natural language querying using generative AI for observability. Leveraging OpenAI, Query Assistant enables developers at all levels to ask questions in plain English instead of a query language, dramatically scaling the platform’s query power while making it possible for everyone on an engineering team to understand code behavior and performance.From the judges
Honeycomb’s ability to store and query high-cardinality and high-dimensionality data truly sets it apart. Particularly impressive is the attention to business value, with features like QoS alerts and AI-generated queries. The query assistant alone will save users countless hours of troubleshooting.
Devops: ProductivityFinalists
- Gradle Develocity
- LinearB
WinnerGradle Develocity IDGFrom the winnerDevelocity (formerly Gradle Enterprise) improves developer productivity and the developer experience by addressing key developer productivity points of friction, frustrations, and bottlenecks associated with the build and test process. This directly and positively impacts several strategic business outcomes… including faster time to market for revenue-generating software products and services and mission-critical operational improvements; reduced cost of software development; better quality digital services and brand experience; and improved ability to attract and retain developer talent by providing a better developer experience.From the judges
Multiple technology innovations address a core problem for large development shops—becoming data-driven in helping developers become efficient in addressing software build issues and tests. … The innovation is its data-driven approach and how it connects to dev tools to identify causes of issues.”
Devops: SecurityFinalists
- Arnica Application Security Platform
- CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale
- Edgio Web Application and API Protection
WinnerArnica Application Security Platform IDGFrom the winnerArnica provides companies with a behavior-based platform for supply chain and application security. Arnica is the first comprehensive pipeline-less security solution to identify and prevent risks associated with your developers, code, and application in real time. Arnica’s platform provides full coverage through native integrations into GitHub, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket, enabling hard-coded secrets mitigation, anomaly detection, excessive permissions mitigation, and code risk security across SAST (static application security testing), IAC (identity-based access control), SCA (software composition analysis), and third-party package reputation scanning. Mitigation actions are served up to developers via chatops integrations with tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.From the judges
Integrated into workflow at the developer level with options for admin notification. … a highly granular solution for software supply chain security.
Devops: TestingFinalists
- Copado Robotic Testing
- Tricentis Testim
WinnerCopado Robotic Testing IDGFrom the winnerBacked by Salesforce Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, Copado helps development teams build end-to-end digital transformation for 1,200+ global brands like Coca-Cola, T-Mobile, Medtronic, and Volkswagen. Copado has a 4.99 star rating on the Salesforce AppExchange and is proven to drive 20X more frequent releases, 95% less downtime, 10X faster testing, and 20% greater productivity. Each month, Copado processes 50 million devops transactions and upskills 60,000+ tech professionals on the world’s largest devops community. Copado also announced strategic partnerships with IBM and Veeva and now has the largest low-code devops ecosystem with more than 150 partners.From the judges
Excellent tech that has already proven successful. If genAI can now be infused totally, this will boost [Copado] to even greater heights.
Software Development: ToolsFinalists
- Mirantis Lens
- Tabnine Enterprise
WinnerTabnine Enterprise IDGFrom the winnerTabnine is the first company to build and use large language models to enable developers to write, test, and scale code for enterprises. What’s more, Tabnine, through significant engineering breakthroughs, was able to build a solution efficient enough to run on a laptop without GPUs. A standout differentiator for Tabnine is code privacy. Tabnine never stores or shares any of its user’s code. Any action that shares code with the Tabnine servers for the purpose of private code models (part of the enterprise offering) requires explicit opt-in. Tabnine does not retain any user code beyond the immediate time frame required for training models. Private code models created by Tabnine Enterprise are only accessible to team members.From the judges
Tabnine Enterprise delivers genAI innovation in software development, an area that is fertile ground for genAI capabilities and where there is likely to be much more activity in the near future. Code privacy is a significant plus, as is economical pricing.
Software Development: PlatformsFinalists
- Oracle APEX
- Vercel
WinnerOracle APEX IDGFrom the winnerOracle APEX is the world’s most popular enterprise low-code application platform. It enables you to build scalable and secure cloud and mobile apps with world-class features 20X faster with 100X less code. Oracle APEX delivers the most productive way to develop and deploy mobile and web apps everywhere—on the cloud and on premises.From the judges
Build applications on the cloud in a web browser with AI assistance, with zero coding and zero code generation, with everything defined in metadata, right on top of your existing data or a new data model? Sounds like the future of software development.
Software Development: ServicesFinalists
- Frontegg Identity Platform
- ngrok Platform
Winnerngrok Platform IDGFrom the winnerngrok is a simplified API-first ingress-as-a-service solution that adds connectivity, security, and observability to apps in one line. Users can make any application, device, or service globally available in seconds without changing their code and it works with the tools developers already love and are already using. ngrok wraps the complexity of authentication, remote management, load balancing, and even the unpredictable nature of the network itself into a programmable component embeddable into any stack. ngrok is built for global scale with security, resiliency, programmability, and extensibility in one place. It supports a growing number of integrations with libraries including Python, JavaScript, Go, and Rust; a Kubernetes Ingress Controller; and a Docker Desktop Extension.From the judges
ngrok uses a great approach with simplified API-first ingress as a service. This affords quick access to any application or service without having to change their code. They balanced security with resiliency all in one offering.
About the judgesStan Gibson is an award-winning editor, writer, and speaker, with 40 years’ experience covering information technology. Formerly executive editor of eWEEK and PC Week, and senior editor at Computerworld, he is currently an Adjunct Analyst at IDC. As principal of Stan Gibson Communications, he writes for many websites, including CIO.com, and is a popular host for online events.Kieran Gilmurray is CEO of Digital Automation and Robotics Ltd. In this role, Kieran helps businesses use AI, data analytics, Generative AI, ChatGPT, intelligent automation, RPA, and LinkedIn to beat their competition.Aaron Goldberg is a renowned industry analyst, writer, and visionary with 40+ years of B2B tech experience. He has worked with all levels of management at IT vendors, along with CIOs and IT executives at endcustomer organizations. His focus centers on identifying the business value of technology solutions.Richard Heimann is an accomplished Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer with expertise in AI strategy, cybersecurity, and ethics, leading organizations like SilverSky and Cybraics to integrate AI into their products and services effectively, achieving significant business growth and industry recognition. His leadership has resulted in successful AI deployments, fostered innovation, and contributed to the broader field through teaching, advisory roles, and published works on AI and data science.Rajesh Jethwa has spent 20 years delivering tailor-made multimillion-pound software for global enterprise organizations. He now helps organizations transform, innovate, and scale. At Digiterre, Raj consults with global financial services, energy, and commodities trading organizations. As CTO, he oversees teams that address complex data and software engineering challenges. Additionally, he advises on enterprise agility, technology strategy, and digital transformation.Peter Nichol is Chief Technology Officer with OROCA Innovations. Peter is a CTO, 4X author, MIT Sloan, and Yale School of Management speaker dedicated to helping organizations connect strategy to execution to maximize company performance. His career has focused on driving and quantifying business value by championing disruptive technologies such as data analytics, blockchain, data science, and artificial intelligence.Igor Oliveira is Partner, Technology at Work & Co. He is a senior software developer fascinated by the underlying essence of computer concepts with a passion for open source as a development model. His focus is on systematic problem solving. In his past life, Igor was a software engineer at Samsung and Nokia.Vishal Parekh is an innovative software architect/engineer with proven managerial expertise. He has an excellent track record of architecting, designing, managing, building, and delivering highly reliable and scalable systems across diverse domains, including cloud-based solutions, internet/enterprise products, and financial systems. Vishal is passionate toward holistic well-being through daily yoga and meditation practices.Dr. Rebecca Parsons recently took the role of CTO Emerita after serving as CTO for Thoughtworks for many years. She continues to pursue her interests in evolutionary architecture, responsible technology (particularly responsible AI), and parallel and distributed systems. She recently co-authored the second edition of the book Building Evolutionary Architectures.Ramprakash Ramamoorthy leads the AI efforts for Zoho Corporation. Ramprakash has been instrumental in setting up Zoho’s AI platform from scratch. He comes with a rich 11+ years of experience in building AI for the enterprise at Zoho. The AI platform currently serves over five billion requests a month and is growing strong. He is a passionate leader with a level-headed approach to emerging technologies and a sought-after speaker at tech conferences.Isaac Sacolick is president of StarCIO, a technology leadership company that guides organizations on mentoring digital trailblazers and building digital transformation core competencies. He is the author of Digital Trailblazer and the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital and speaks about agile planning, devops, data science, product management, and digital transformation best practices. Sacolick is a recognized top social CIO and a digital transformation influencer.Scott Schober is president and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems, a 50-year-old provider of advanced, world-class wireless test and security solutions. He is the author of three bestselling security books: Hacked Again, Cybersecurity is Everybody’s Business, and Senior Cyber. Scott is a highly sought-after author and expert for live security events, media appearances, and commentary on the topics of ransomware, wireless threats, drone surveillance and hacking, cybersecurity for consumers, and small business.Serdar Yegulalp is a senior writer at InfoWorld, covering software development and operations tools, the Python ecosystem, machine learning, containerization, and reviews of products in those categories. Before joining InfoWorld, Serdar wrote for the original Windows Magazine, InformationWeek, the briefly resurrected Byte, and a slew of other publications. When he’s not covering IT, he’s writing SF and fantasy published under his own personal imprint, Infinimata Press.
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Source: infoworld.com