The IT Journalists Association of the Philippines (ITJAP), also known as Cyberpress, recently handed out the awards to the year’s best in the local IT industry.
Taking the crown for the “œIT Company of the Year“ is Samsung Philippines, narrowly besting one of the pillars of the local IT industry, IBM Philippines. The South Korean firm rolled out two of the most popular handheld devices in the market today, the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Samsung Galaxy Note II.
IBM Philippines’ head honcho, however, took the “œIT Executive of the Year“ title. Mariels Almeda Winhoffer is the first female Country General Manager for the IBM Philippines and was recognized by IT journalists for leading the company in a number of initiatives, including building up the country as a social analytics hub for IBM.
“œIT Product of the Year“ goes to DOST’s Project Noah easily winning over Cherry Mobile’s most bang-for-the-buck phone, Flare, and Microsoft’s Windows 8. Project NOAH is a pioneering program that contributed in saving thousands of lives this year in which the country experienced a number of devastating typhoons.
The “œIT Start-up of the Year“ award goes to Payroll Hero, a local start-up that is making a name in the international scene. Payroll Hero is an app that uses an employee’s face as primary biometric to avoid manual punching of timecards and also prevent ghost employees. These facial pics are then given a mood rating to establish an array of business intelligence to companies corollaries between productivity and mood. Other nominees for this award includes Kalibrr, and Kuyi Mobile.
The passage of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which set off a wave of protests from Pinoy netizens, was the runaway choice as “œIT Story of the Year“.
Honored as this year’s “œLifetime Achievement Awardee“ for his meritorious contributions to the local and global IT industry is Silicon Valley-based Filipino tech icon Diosdado “œDado” Banatao. He is currently the chairman of PhilDev Forum and pioneered a number of PC technologies such as the graphics accelerator chip that are still being used in the high-tech industry.
During the awards night, Cyberpress also managed to raise over Php40,000 for the victims of Typhoon Pablo through an auction of an iPhone 5 from Globe, an iPad mini from Bazinga, and an Olympus digital camera from Metrobank. Local IT distributor also donated 50 ZTE phones for the typhoon victims.
