Winners of this year's Codie awards, given by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIAA) Tuesday evening, include some familiar names in software as well as some lesser known and new companies.

Awards were to be given out at a ceremony in San Francisco with high-profile vendors like Red Hat, Adobe Systems, and Salesforce.com taking home prizes along with newer companies like SightSpeed. Contestants competed in various software and information categories.

"What I think is most gratifying is the Codie awards are a [great] leveler and smaller companies have as much chance to win as large companies," said Ken Wasch, SIAA president. In an industry that increasingly looks like it is dominated by a few larger players, the Codie award gives everyone a chance, he stressed

"It's a celebration of the breadth and depth of our industry," Wasch said.

Contestants were self-nominated in 72 categories and judged on the basis of usability and features. Winners were subject to three rounds of judging; they receive a trophy and the right to incorporate their victory in promotions.

Among the categories, winners, and products were:

• Asset management -- Express Metrix with its Express Software Manager

• Business intelligence or knowledge management -- Tableau Software, Tableau Desktop v3.0

• Business Productivity -- Jigsaw, Jigsaw.

• Collaboration solution -- Adobe, Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional

• Communication Solution -- SightSpeed, SightSpeed 6.0

• Content Management -- Clickability, Clickability On-Demand Web Content Management Platform

• Data Security -- Absolute Software, Computrace Complete

• Database management -- FileMaker, FileMaker Pro 9

• E-commerce -- NetSuite, NetSuite 2007.0

• Enterprise search engine -- Coveo, Coveo Enterprise Search 5.0

• Identity management -- Red Hat, Red Hat Directory Server

• Open source solution -- Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

• On-demand platform - -Salesforce.com, Force.com

• Security solution -- Novell, Novell Identity and Security Management Portfolio

• SaaS solution -- Salesforce.com, Salesforce CRM

• Software development -- Infragistics, Infragistics NetAdvantage for .Net 2007.3

• Systems management -- Kace, Kbox Systems Management Appliance

• Web services solution -- Adobe, Adobe ColdFusion 8.

The full list of winners was to be posted at a Web page accessible here immediately following the event.