Celebrating the spirit of inspiration, the Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Awards 2009 is back with a bang. The contest is designed to provide organizations in Asia Pacific an opportunity to showcase their technology innovations in a challenging environment that inspire their peers, competitors, customers, staff and the technology industry.

The year 2009 might well prove to be a litmus test for the long-term success of an organization. The current economic crisis is a wake-up call for organizations to streamline business processes and build competitive advantage using technology. This year's awards program will set new benchmarks, bring new insights and most importantly be an ideal learning opportunity for companies to succeed in the uncertain economy.

The awards program will enable the sharing of best practices that help to tide over the turbulent economy. In the process, it will ignite the fire of inspiration, which is at the heart of Hitachi Data Systems – a leading global storage solutions provider.

Initiated in 2008, the inaugural Hitachi Data Systems IT Inspiration Awards generated widespread interest from the IT community in Asia Pacific. This is borne out of 87 nominations received from over 43 top enterprises across the region like Atos Origin, HDFC Bank and Starhub to name a few.

The awards created an interactive and stimulating platform to discuss the challenges and solutions pertaining to the proliferation of data with industry experts and decision-makers. More importantly, it established an influential community of IT professionals who shared best practices and inspired others in the process.