Selected by an independent panel of 11 judges, each of the seven category winners has demonstrated excellence by creating innovative applications that provide tangible benefits to public or private sector organisations, SMEs or consumers. The awards were also expanded this year to recognise collaboration amongst app developers, in which Alliance Partners have integrated their solutions to work together to further enhance the customer experience.
Category winners are: Accelerating Innovation for Entrepreneurs (SME) – Internalia Group – A digital signature application that allows workers to sign office documents remotely anytime, anywhere, without the need to install separate or specialised accessories on a BlackBerry smartphone.
Transforming Enterprise Business Performance (Large Enterprise) – Schad GmbH – Enables secure mobile access to Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs ) via a BlackBerry smartphone using public mobile networks.
Delivering Service Excellence – CommuniTake Technologies Ltd – Enables technical experts to remotely control a BlackBerry smartphone through an Internet connection.
Driving Innovation in the Public Sector – Neosistec – Provides Cruz Roja (Spanish Red Cross) workers with a tool that keeps them connected with the central station, allowing the station to monitor the location and status of volunteers in real time.
Life On BlackBerry – Interchange Group and BskyB – An application that brings Sky Sports Football Centre to BlackBerry smartphones.
Entertainment on BlackBerry – Nobex Technologies – Allows users to listen to almost 7,000 radio stations from more than 100 countries around the world and see playlist information for over 2,700 stations.
Love Working Together – Bighand and Rekoop – Allows dictation time to be captured automatically. Rekoop works with BigHand and auto populates the time and narrative information.
“Innovation is at the heart of the BlackBerry platform and the BlackBerry Alliance Programme plays an integral role in driving the pace of this innovation,” said Tyler Lessard, Vice President of Global Alliances at RIM. “The EMEA Innovation Awards are designed to recognise the exceptional achievements of those partners that have embraced the differentiating qualities of the BlackBerry platform to deliver first-class applications to benefit our mutual customers. All of the winners have made an outstanding and transformative contribution to the mobile applications market and complement RIM’s ethos of placing the user experience at the centre of our mobile solutions.”