NEW YORK, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Nemertes Research recognized six Voice over IP (VOIP) and unified communications (UC) providers that received top ratings from business customers at yesterday's PilotHouse awards dinner in San Francisco.

Nemertes also presented Innovator awards to 17 organizations that have effectively leveraged VOIP and UC to improve their operations. The awards are based on a multi-faceted point system, evaluating several criteria such as how efficiently organizations are implementing VOIP and how many UC applications they use. These companies include American Family Insurance Group, BAE Systems, Inc., Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Dallas, Cadence Design Systems Inc., City of Oakland, Finisar Corporation, Georgia Technology Authority, Insight Financial Credit Union, Kaiser Permanente, MaRS Discovery District, McKesson Corporation, Monsanto Company, New York Life Insurance Company, Olin College of Engineering, Safeway Insurance Group, Sempra Energy, and Shaw Industries.

"These companies have positioned themselves to leverage emerging technology," says Robin Gareiss, executive vice president and senior founding partner, Nemertes. "The innovators demonstrate a forward-looking approach toward integrating VOIP and UC into their businesses, with the intent of achieving a positive return on investment."

As part of Nemertes' Unified Communications and Collaboration research project, 668 IT executives rated their VOIP and UC providers and shared details on how they use these applications. PilotHouse Awards recognized both VOIP and UC providers who received the highest average scores in several categories. Vendor winners include Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., IBM, Microsoft Corp., Nortel, ShoreTel, Inc., Siemens Enterprise Communications, and 3Com. To see what awards these vendors won, please reference the VOIP and Unified Communications press releases.

About the PilotHouse Awards

Nemertes' PilotHouse Award program recognizes companies in a variety of technology markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as technological innovation, customer and technical service, and value and strategic product development.

PilotHouse Awards are based 100% on the experiences of IT-decision makers. No vendors sponsor this research.

About Nemertes Research

Nemertes Research is a research-advisory firm that specializes in analyzing and quantifying the business value of emerging technologies. You can learn more about Nemertes Research at our Website www.nemertes.com.

SOURCE Nemertes Research