EuroCloud announces the First 2011 European Cloud Computing Awards

EuroCloud, the European organisation for cloud computing, has concluded its first pan-European Cloud Computing Awards in Paris by delivering trophies in four categories – Best Startup, Best Solution, Best Use Case in the Public Sector and Best Use Case in the Private Sector.

EuroCloud’s vision is to represent the cloud industry in Europe and be an accelerator of business and technological relationships. This led the organisation to create the awards as a way of recognising those organisations that encapsulate the heart of this vision and highlight best practice within the industry.

The Ceremony saw 150 attendees – the brightest cloud experts and practitioners from across the industry – gathering on the Paris en Scène boat for a trip through Paris. During the trip the European Jury named the winners of each of the four categories from among the 29 European competitors coming from nine countries including Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK.

The European Cloud Computing Award for the Best Startup goes to Severalnines (Sweden). This innovative startup provides automation and management software for cloud database platforms. Its products enable customers to easily deploy, manage, monitor and scale their clustered database platforms. Performance, flexibility and optimisation of multiple data sources inside the cloud have always been critical to the overall performance of the cloud and Severalnines is giving strong answers to this problem.

The European Cloud Computing Award in the Best Solution category goes to RunMyProcess (France). RunMyProcess is taking power from the cloud to an enterprise with an approach that can greatly improve productivity of PaaS in Design, Build and Run phases. RunMyProcess can also help users work in a way more closely aligned with the business processes. Those solutions can also be used by end-users. This company is betting on partnerships seemed to have the highest potential.

The European Cloud Computing Award in the Best Use Case in the Public Sector category goes to EBRC (Luxembourg). The Trusted Cloud approach of EBRC at IBBL proved very interesting as an open, easy and secure method of access for all the healthcare stakeholders, in a very regulated environment. It proves that cloud is secure for even for the most sensitive information. EBRC also managed all aspects of the project to speed up its completion and relieve complexity.

The European Cloud Computing Award for the Best Use Case in the Private Sector goes to eBuilder (Sweden). In this business case, the alignment of e-builder with its client Alfa Laval proved remarkable, and showed the potential of the cloud for distributed companies at a critical and end-to-end level for the client. E-builder was instrumental in enhancing the agility of its client in an ever changing and demanding market.

As well as celebrating these achievements, these prominent figures took the opportunity to discuss topics around innovation in the cloud, the impact of cloud on business practices and models, how to balance policy and regulation in order to protect end-users without hampering growth and deal with some of the cross-border issues that cloud computing raises.

Founder and President, Pierre-José Billotte, told attendees, “Through this amazing European programme, EuroCloud has demonstrated its capacity to be the key international organisation dedicated to the Cloud Computing in Europe. The capacity to achieve the missions and goals announced at its inception, as well as shed light on European cloud computing Industry and on European innovation, as well as showing that European cloud computing users are at the leading edge of technology to be more competitive is truly remarkable.”

Action plan
Based on this first huge success, EuroCloud has already put plans in motion for the 2012 European Cloud Computing Awards. Next year’s event will be organised as a two steps process. The first step is identifying the best Cloud Computing companies of the year 2012 in each countries participating in this program, and the second will see those selected go into the European final to compete with all the other local European winners. EuroCloud expects the participation of 15 countries.

About the Jury
The Awards selection committee was composed of nine prominent European experts: Mathieu Poujol, P.A.C and chairman of jury, Lutz Schubert, Head of ISI, HLRS, University of Stuttgart, Rapporteur of the White Paper on Cloud Computing of the European Commission, Matjaz Juric, Full Professor, Java Guru, University of Lujbljana, Peter Hagedorn, Director EuroCIO, Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of EeSA (European e-skills Association), Maryline Lengert, Senior Advisor ESA (European Space Agency), Responsible for the Cloud Computing, GBS Bindra, Chief Innovation Officer Logica Group, Managing Director Logica India, Alan Hardiman, EMEA Region Cloud Computing Lead at CSC, Bill McNee, President and CEO Saugatuck Technology, Peter Moebuis, VP business development, Orange.

About EuroCloud
EuroCloud (http://www.eurocloud.org/) is the first pan-European network of SaaS and cloud computing vendors and industry participants, with a presence today in more than 27 European countries. Through its diverse membership of vendors, integrators, supporting parties and industry experts, EuroCloud will promote cloud computing in Europe, sharing best practices, encouraging innovation and extending business within Europe and beyond.

Luxembourg is represented in the pan-European network EuroCloud through the association EuroCloud Luxembourg chaired by Ms Amal Choury, CEO of e-Kenz S.A.

The following companies that had won in May 2011 the EuroCloud Luxembourg awards 2011 in the four different categories participated this year in the European Cloud Computing Awards :
ebrc, LuxCloud, Telindus and Wealth@work