The second annual UK Cloud Awards will take place in less than two months to honour the achievements of the UK's ever-growing community of cloud vendors and users.
The awards are being jointly organised by the Cloud Industry Forum and Cloud Pro, and will be held on 11 March 2015 at Plateau in Canary Wharf, London. The event is co-sponsored by HP, Ingram Micro and Microsoft.
Now is the time for the UK tech community to nominate the cloud products, projects and people who have impressed them in 2014 as the closing deadline for entries is just over a week away.
Alex Hilton, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum, said the last four years have seen cloud technologies increasingly become a "strategic consideration" for IT buyers, which is a trend the awards aims to celebrate.
"The 2014 UK Cloud Awards was a great success, and given the growth and maturity of cloud services today, we are delighted to continue the awards programme and further enhance its reputation," said Hilton.
"We are anticipating a bigger and bolder event, but also a more extensive choice of both awards categories to showcase innovation in the UK Cloud industry."
The deadline for award submissions is 23 January 2015, and nominations must be made via the www.ukcloudawards.co.uk website to qualify for inclusion.
"The final shortlist and winners will be profiled extensively across the publications of the organisers and will be covered on social media, YouTube video profiles and case studies, as well as receiving the Awards on stage in front of the most important players in the UK Cloud industry," Hilton added.
The judging panel for this year's event includes Cloud Pro founding editor Max Cooter, as well as its group editor Maggie Holland, who will be joined by a mix of consultants, CIOs, academics and venture capitalists to deliberate over who should take home the prizes at next year's event.
"There are some truly exceptional individuals and companies working in the UK cloud industry and the UK Cloud Awards 2015 will be a great opportunity to get the cloud community together to celebrate their successes," said Cooter.
The inaugural UK Cloud Awards took place in March 2014 at London's City Hall to showcase the innovation and technical excellence demonstrated by the UK cloud market.
On the night, Google, Splunk and Zynstra were among the big hitters to pick up product awards, while university clearing house UCAS and Spanish telco Telefonica respectively scooped the prizes for best public and private sector cloud projects.
A full list of the categories for the 2015 UK Cloud Awards can be found below:
Best in Class Products
* Best cloud storage product
* Best cloud business continuity service
* Best cloud management product
* Best cloud productivity suite
* Best cloud accounting suite
* Best cloud CRM/HCM product
* Most innovative SMB cloud solution
* Most innovative enterprise cloud solution
* Best cloud ERP product
Best in Cloud Security
* Best cloud encryption product
* Best cloud privacy/protection product
* Best data security provider
* Best general cloud security product
Best in Class Service Provider
* Best newcomer (i.e. new CSP)
* Best platform provider
* Best cloud integrator
* Best Cloudstore provider
* Best Cloud Service Provider
Projects
* Best cloud project (public sector)
* Best cloud project (private sector)
Achievement Award
* Cloud personality of the year
