Best Security Product
Editors' Best
Gold: Avecto Privilege Guard 2.5 • Avecto • www.avecto.com
Silver: RSA Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Suite • EMC • www.rsa.com
Bronze: Splunk 4.1 • Splunk • www.splunk.com
Why It Won: Privilege Guard uses the principle of least privilege to let administrators easily secure their server environments. Admin-level rights can be assigned to applications, tasks, and scripts rather than individual users.
Jeff Douglas, senior advisor for Infrastructure Services Sensitive at National Government Services, has been using Privilege Guard since February 2010. Jeff likes "the ease of use in creating policies to be able to limit the rights required to be granted to our users." In addition, he notes that when his organization had some performance issues with an application after implementing Privilege Guard, Avecto responded to their support request within hours and quickly identified and solved the problem. According to Jeff, "the product support has been the best part of our experience!"
Community Choice
Gold: NetIQ Security Manager • NetIQ • www.netiq.com
Silver: Symantec Endpoint Protection • Symantec • www.symantec.com
Bronze: Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection • Sophos • www.sophos.com
"NetIQ Security Manager has really reduced compliance and security headaches for us."
Other hot vote-getters in this year's survey . . .
- Citrix's Access Gateway
- Avecto's Privilege Guard 2.5
- Splunk 4.1
Best SharePoint Product
Editors' Best
Gold: Social Sites for SharePoint 2010 • NewsGator • www.newsgator.com
Silver: Idera SharePoint admin toolset 2.0 • Idera • www.idera.com
Bronze: SharePoint Website Accelerator • Aptimize • www.aptimize.com
Why It Won: SharePoint is only as useful as the ease with which users can use it—and NewsGator offers a way to help users find information, share ideas, and collaborate with their peers, making SharePoint collaborative in real-life and not just on paper.
Social Sites for SharePoint 2010 has helped Medtronic, a global leader in medical technology, to enhance its SharePoint collaboration capabilities, according to Mary Maida, information solutions manager at Medtronic. The company is far-flung, with 120 locations—an ideal poster child for using SharePoint for collaboration. Medtronic uses SharePoint primarily for internal websites, Maida said. However, in spite of SharePoint's capabilities, the company still wanted a way to enhance SharePoint "to help make people and information more obvious." NewsGator's familiarity with the SharePoint environment made it "a natural fit" to work with Medtronic, Maida said. "We encourage employees to connect in new ways. The use of Social Sites makes it easy for employees to asynchronously engage in open knowledge sharing that drives learning, new ideas, and innovation." Maida said that since the company started using Social Sites a year ago, she's been "encouraged by the increasing engagement of our employees."
Community Choice
Gold: Symantec Enterprise Vault for SharePoint • Symantec • www.symantec.com
Silver: EMC SourceOne for Microsoft SharePoint • EMC • www.emc.com
Bronze: NetWrix SharePoint Change Reporter • NetWrix • www.netwrix.com
"Symantec's automatic archiving offers a ton of value."
Other hot vote-getters in this year's survey . . .
- Colligo Network's Colligo Contributor Pro for SharePoint 2010
- Axceler's ControlPoint 3 for Microsoft SharePoint
- Quest Software's Site Administrator for SharePoint
Best System Utility
Editors' Best
Gold: System Mechanic Business • iolo technologies • www.iolo.com
Silver: TuneUp Utilities 2010 • TuneUp • www.tune-up.com
Bronze: Diskeeper 2010 Professional • Diskeeper • www.diskeeper.com
Why It Won: The award-winning System Mechanic software isn't just for personal PC use anymore. With System Mechanic Business, small organizations can speed up and clean up users' PCs without blowing their IT budget.
"I assist school districts with their technology needs," said Kirk Moore, a tech support specialist at Education Service Center, Region XI, Texas. At one school, some computers were running slow and experiencing other problems. "Because the school had a small budget and a small tech support staff—me—I needed something that would help keep the PCs running for another year at peak performance. I decided to purchase System Mechanic Business. I installed it on a few teachers' computers and ran it a few times to clean up the drive and registry, defrag, etc. When I turned the computers back over to the teachers, they were thrilled. They were able to be productive again. I'm now supporting a new school. The principal was complaining about his computer being slow and getting error messages or just locking up every so often. I installed one of my licensed copies on his computer and asked him to try it out. I told him that if the program worked and he was happy, we could purchase a 100-user license to install on the teachers' computers. Well, after a few days, I was placing an order for the school. System Mechanic has saved me so much time—time that I can focus on other projects."
Community Choice
Gold: Norton SystemWorks • Symantec • www.symantec.com
Silver: WinZip 12.1 • WinZip • www.winzip.com
Bronze: Acronis Disk Director • Acronis • www.acronis.com
"I had a sluggish, mostly unresponsive computer, and after letting Norton SystemWorks loose on it, the system is now as fast as it used to be."
Other hot vote-getters in this year's survey . . .
- Microsoft's Sysinternals Suite
- Malwarebytes's Anti-Malware
- Wireshark 1.2
Best Systems Monitoring Product
Editors' Best
Gold: HP Operations Manager • HP • www.hp.com
Silver: Applications Manager • ManageEngine • www.manageengine.com
Bronze: Service Monitor • NetWrix • www.netwrix.com
Why it won: HP Operations Manager is a comprehensive solution for managing both your physical and virtual infrastructure.
"HP Operations Manager provided automated monitoring of both servers and applications like SQL Server and Exchange, allowing you to manage your entire infrastructure through a 'single pane of glass,'" said Windows IT Pro technical director Michael Otey. "Operations Manager can monitor using agents or it can be run agentless. It has the ability to perform automated problem resolution and can forward alerts via SMS, pagers, and email."
Community Choice
Gold: HP Operations Manager • HP • www.hp.com
Silver: Service Monitor • NetWrix • www.netwrix.com
Bronze: Applications Manager • ManageEngine • www.manageengine.com
"HP Operations Manager is comprehensive and dependable."
Other hot vote-getters in this year's survey . . .
- Spiceworks's Spiceworks
- LogicMonitor's LogicMonitor
- TNT Software's ELM Enterprise Manager