FMS: the Future of Storage and Memory hereby announces the 18th Annual FMS Awards competition

FMS Best of Show (BoS) Awards represent a great opportunity for industry recognition of your company's products and solutions. Winners of these industry-recognized awards are able to effectively build their brand and image as an innovative leader in the marketplace. We have expanded the 2024 BoS Awards program to include recognition of a wide variety of memory and storage technologies. Don't miss this chance to have your company's name and solutions in the public spotlight!

There are eight distinct award categories which address the wide range of high-performance memory and storage innovations in the market. New this year, the Awards Committee is expanding the Most Innovative Technology category to include all high-speed memory and storage technologies. Besides NAND flash, the award nominations can now include DRAM, RRAM, MRAM, HDD, Tape, and DNA storage.

When we judge the award nominations, we look for innovative designs as well as the potential for industry leadership. Determine the best category for your product based on the descriptions below. If you are applying for more than one award, complete fully separate entries for each submission.

Award Categories

Most Innovative Sustainability Technology

This FMS Award category recognizes how a product or architecture may include high performance memory and storage hardware and software as part of a sustainable company program. Sustainability technology can have a positive effect on the future of our planet in several ways:

• Improving resource efficiency and reducing environmental impact
• Optimizing energy consumption with reductions in power and cooling
• Reducing carbon footprint with greater storage density and physical space savings
• Achieving ESG company goals and objectives

Sustainability solutions are important as IT workloads are growing from digital transformation, shifts to virtual workplaces with expanded mobile computing, and new generative AI-enabled applications. Sustainability also inspires vendors to seek out new and innovative ways to run their business. Vendor implementations of sustainability can include the following:

• Quality manufacturing processes with streamlined supply chain management
• Distribution efficiencies utilizing recyclable packaging
• Product life cycle management including end-of-life alternative uses or recyclability

Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Application

This FMS Award category recognizes how a product or service that includes all forms of high-performance memory or storage is being used to solve a specific AI problem, with examples including machine learning, cognitive computing, big data, IoT, containers, and virtualized customer environments. This category also includes the use of AI in storage and memory products, or potentially in a product that accelerates AI tasks. AI implementations can be deployed at any point of the IT ecosystem, including the core, edge, endpoint, or cloud. Examples of AI applications could include incorporation of AI-powered large language models and/or natural language models such as OpenAI ChatGPT, Google Bard, or Microsoft Copilot. Nominations can also include the integration of neural nets into SSD controllers or SoCs, and GPU integration capabilities that accelerate data in/out of GPUs. AI Use Cases might include solutions for financial trading, computer-assisted diagnosis, voice and image search, fraud detection, smart robots, smart cars, supply chain management, network routing, and asset management.

Most Innovative Hyperscaler Implementation

This FMS Award category recognizes innovation in all forms of high-performance memory or storage solutions for integration and use in hyperscale IT environments. The nomination must describe an end-user case study that highlights how a specific hyperscale customer and possibly its technology partners have solved an important problem by use of a specific memory or storage technology. Examples of such customer implementations include compelling ROI, Quality of Service, Business Continuity, Security, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Archive, Virtualization, Software Defined Storage, Simplicity of Operations, High Availability, and other benefits that made a difference for a hyperscale customer.

Most Innovative Customer Implementation

This FMS Award category recognizes innovation in all forms of high-performance memory or storage in a real customer application. The nomination must describe a customer case study that highlights how a specific customer has solved an important problem by use of a specific product or service. Examples of customer implementations include compelling ROI, Quality of Service, Business Continuity, Security, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Archive, Virtualization, Software Defined Storage, Simplicity of Operations, High Availability, and other benefits that made a difference for the customer.

Most Innovative Startup Company

This FMS Award category recognizes the most creative and ambitious startup companies that are blazing a trail of innovation in the memory and storage industry. Is your company an emerging company that will change the marketplace for memory and storage solutions? This award applauds businesses on the entrepreneurial journey from inspiration and learning, all the way through startup, scale up and becoming a market disruptor, and a champion in the technology landscape.

Most Innovative Technology

This FMS Award category recognizes innovations that will change the way high-performance memory or storage works, and which is used in a product. Recipients of this award enjoy significant differentiation in their intellectual property and patents which describe alternative competitive technologies in the memory industry. Examples of technological innovations recognized by this category include any or all of the following:

• Memory and storage used in NAS/SAN and/or converged/hyperconverged infrastructure
• Technology resulting in record-breaking performance and/or scalability; new levels of high availability and/or resiliency; energy, power, and footprint efficiencies; and optimized capacity
• Groundbreaking implementation of industry standards
• Advanced memory and storage management capabilities
• Other innovative hardware/software features

Most Innovative Consumer Application

This FMS Award category recognizes innovation in a consumer application product or service, including how some form of high-performance memory or storage is being used to solve specific consumer problems. An exciting new consumer use for your product is really what this category is all about. Examples include smartphones, multimedia gaming systems, navigational systems, tablets, mobile computing solutions, and other consumer hardware and software products.

Most Innovative Enterprise Business Application

This FMS Award category recognizes how a product or service uses high-performance memory or storage to solve a specific business problem. An exciting new business use for your product is really what this category is all about. Examples include commercial applications and databases that apply to business or vertical markets addressing specific market segments such as video/broadcast, automotive, imaging, military, healthcare, financial services, and aerospace. Application solutions can address a wide range of business requirements for the traditional data center, desktop/server virtualization, containerized environments, backup/restore, and public / private / hybrid cloud computing.

Competition Details

Competition Requirement

The only requirement for participation in the FMS 2024 Awards Program is that the nomination needs to be submitted by Sponsors or Exhibitors. Non-sponsor and non-exhibitor applicants will not be accepted at this time.

Competition Deadline

Entries are due by 6 pm Pacific Daylight Time on Friday, June 21, 2024. No exceptions will be given.

Competition Judging

The competition will be judged by a panel of experts (whose decision is final).

The following are the primary evaluation criteria considered by the judges:

• Distinctiveness of the application, technology, or product
• Central use of high-performance memory or storage as a solution
• Technological innovation and business significance to the overall marketplace

Entry Submission

Please use the Best of Show Competition Entry Form to submit your proposal. If you are applying for more than one award, please complete separate entries for each. Please also send a zip file of any supporting documentation you desire for the awards committee to use in reviewing your nomination. Supporting documentation can include (Data sheet, brochure, PowerPoint presentation, product review, etc.).

• Please make sure to fill out the online form completely including attached supporting documentation.
• If you have successfully completed the online form, you will be transported to a page confirming your submission. You will also receive an email confirming your submission.

If you do not receive a confirmation or you have any questions regarding the online submission form process, please contact [email protected].

Question?

If you have any questions regarding this program (the application or creating an zip/archive for supporting documents), or would like information regarding Exhibitor/Sponsor opportunities, please email: [email protected].