2010 Consensus Awards Celebrate Innovation Transforming Business, Education and the Environment

Sydney, Australia – 2010

Australian and New Zealand innovators have been celebrated at the 2010 Consensus Awards, recognising an outstanding group of technologies tackling real-world challenges across business, education, software, energy and sustainability.

Now in their 11th year, the Consensus Awards continue to uncover and recognise technology being developed across Australia and New Zealand — from emerging businesses and specialist developers to established organisations pushing the boundaries of what technology can achieve.

And 2010 delivered an extraordinary mix.

This year's recognised technologies included new ways to build enterprise applications, manage schools, test complex software and protect students online, alongside innovations designed to monitor energy consumption, deliver sustainable lighting and tackle environmental challenges.

The 2010 Consensus Award recipients included:

Consensus Software Award Winners

• Core Technology — Aviarc™

• Excido Pty Ltd trading as Edumate — Edumate3

• Catch Limited — Enterprise Tester

• Thales Australia — JHMI – Human Machine Interface

• NetBox Blue — SecureEd

• Australian Business Week Limited — The Café Simulation

Consensus GreenTech Award Winners

• Integrated Research — PowerMinder

• Barefoot Power — Solar Lighting

• 2C Light Company

• One Water Naturally

Together, the winners demonstrate the remarkable breadth of technology being created in our own backyard.

Aviarc™ challenged traditional approaches to enterprise application development, while Edumate3 demonstrated how technology could transform the management of schools and their communities.

Enterprise Tester tackled the increasingly critical challenge of software quality assurance, while Thales Australia's JHMI showcased sophisticated Australian capability in human-machine interface technology.

SecureEd addressed the growing importance of protecting young people in an increasingly connected world, while The Café Simulation used technology to give young Australians practical experience in business and entrepreneurship.

The GreenTech winners were equally ambitious.

Integrated Research's PowerMinder demonstrated how technology could provide greater visibility over electricity consumption, while Barefoot Power's Solar Lighting showed the enormous potential for practical, affordable renewable-energy solutions.

Innovations from 2C Light Company and One Water Naturally further demonstrated how Australian technology businesses are applying innovation to environmental challenges — proving that commercial opportunity and sustainability do not need to be opposing forces.

The technologies may be dramatically different, but the thinking behind them is remarkably similar: identify a problem, challenge the conventional way of solving it and build something better.

That is precisely what the Consensus Awards exist to recognise.

The 2010 Consensus Software Awards were presented by Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, on 29 June at the Amora Jamison Hotel in Sydney, with IBM as Major Sponsor. The program was endorsed and supported by Austrade, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the Australian Computer Society and the New Zealand Computer Society, with Cliftons, Bayard Lawyers, TiE and the Alinement Network as Program Partners.

The 2010 Consensus GreenTech Awards were presented in Sydney on 10 December by Russell Edwards, NSW State Manager of AusIndustry, and Christopher Long, National Sales Director of Dimension Data, with AusIndustry and Dimension Data supporting the program.

While the awards were presented across different Consensus events during the year, together the recipients tell the story of Australian and New Zealand innovation in 2010.

From the software powering complex organisations to technologies addressing some of the world's biggest environmental challenges, these innovators demonstrate that world-class ideas don't have to originate in Silicon Valley.

Some of them are being built right here.

And Consensus is proud to recognise them.