I had the please of presenting the BlueSky award at the ISV Innovation Summit yesterday.  We had 3 solid finalists that show the kind of software innovation happening across Canada.

Congratulations to our 2 runners-up are:

• Oculus Info Inc. :  Oculus Info Inc. is a provider of cutting-edge business visualization software solutions. Their solution, Oculus WPF, simplifies the creation of scalable 3D visualizations and allows users to directly view patterns in large ranges of data and easily create dynamic and expressive visualizations.
• Sales Resource Group Inc. : Sales Resource Group Inc. is a consulting firm specializing in sales compensation and sales force effectiveness. PlanIT Sales Compensation is a complete “design to payment” solution providing effective sales incentive management for complex variable payment programs.

All three finalists are amazing and the choice was difficult, but the winner of the first BlueSky Award is:

• Sitemasher Corporation provides an integrated tool set that easily enables business users to Build, Manage and Optimize their web sites. This SaaS tool is a collaborative platform that provides the power of a customized solution in a drag and drop WYSIWYG environment.

Congratulations to the entire team at Sitemasher!  They will receive a customized engagement plan from Microsoft:

Software Development resources may include:

• Access to our premier support staff
• Software license and subscriptions
• Access to new technologies, and/or
• Access to Microsoft Technology Centers for software testing and architecture guidance

Business Development resources may include:

• Presence on the Microsoft Startup Zone website
• Inclusion in Microsoft collateral, advertising or public relations
• A published case study
• Blogging opportunities with Emerging Business Team Portfolio Managers
• Event opportunities, and/or
• Introductions to investors, as needed

Microsoft resources may include:

• Introductions to internal product groups as appropriate
• Visibility in front of key executives
• Early stage product feedback to internal development teams, and/or
• Active collaboration on emerging trends and technologies