The background: With the growing importance of business integration, an increasing number of companies are reconsidering their IT architecture and are implementing solutions such as EAI or SOA. Flexible integration architectures will be decisive in contributing to future business success. Although business integration plays a key role in an enterprise's success, awareness of this topic by top management as well as among the general public is not very significant. The Business Integration Award should also contribute toward increasing this awareness.

The jury: Dr. Wolfgang Martin, independent analyst, Richard Nußdorfer, Managing Director of CSA Consulting, Prof. Robert Winter, IWI Director at the University of St. Gallen and Dr. Beatrix Bachmann (IIR Deutschland GmbH).

Jury spokesperson Dr. Wolfgang Martin, independent analyst and head of the forum, praised the winning concept as being "a particularly well accomplished business integration". Above all else he was convinced by the cost-benefit effect and high productivity that were attained. Furthermore, the project is an example of the current state of IT development in SMEs. "SMEs understand the issue of integration", explains Dr. Wolfgang Martin aside from the award ceremony, "In many places now it’s about the implementation."

Markus Kellermeyer, head of Technology Consulting at itelligence, stated in accepting the prize on behalf of KTR and itelligence "This shows that innovative technology has profitably arrived in the midsized market. Issues such as SOA and enterprise integration are finding their way to SMEs through concrete projects."

Stephan Rosenberger, head of TACKE DATENTECHNIK GmbH & Co. KG and the person responsible for IT at KTR Kupplungstechnik GmbH, was pleased about the prize, commenting "For years, the topic of business integration has been an issue at KTR that has been promoted as a service to our customers and thus as a competitive advantage. Thanks to the project presented here, we have been able to achieve a real breakthrough."