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InfoWorld’s 2017 Technology of the Year Awards recognized 32 products and projects that its editors and reviewers encountered during the preceding year. At least 20 winners were open-source projects, cloud versions of open-source projects, or commercial products built around an open-source core. The roundup also emphasized cloud-born engineering and security—but it is a historical snapshot, not a current product ranking or buying guide.
What the 2017 awards recognized
Doug Dineley’s overview of the awards was published on January 25, 2017. InfoWorld selected tools for developers, IT professionals, and businesses, drawing on products its editors and reviewers had encountered in the preceding year. The companion awards feature, credited to InfoWorld Staff, covered a wide range of technology rather than a single product category. Read InfoWorld’s 2017 overview and companion feature.
InfoWorld counted 32 winners and said at least 20 belonged to one of three groups: open-source projects, cloud versions of open-source projects, or commercial products with an open-source core. That is the publisher’s count and classification, not an independently audited measurement of the technology industry.
Open source and cloud shaped the selection
The overview connected cloud-born engineering with advances in stream processing, mobile development, and data analysis, citing LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google as examples of companies whose work helped shape those fields. This was InfoWorld’s account in 2017, not a survey of those companies’ current products.
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The feature’s named examples show how varied the winners were: TensorFlow; Databricks and Apache Spark; Docker and Kubernetes; Confluent Platform; Google Cloud Bigtable; Elastic Stack; MapR-FS; Lucidworks Fusion; and Let’s Encrypt with Certbot. The selection included open-source software, managed cloud services, and commercial enterprise products, so “winner” did not mean one shared licensing or deployment model.
Security was a prominent 2017 theme
InfoWorld’s overview singled out security, with examples spanning analytics for malicious network traffic, deception-based cybersecurity, and application-security tools aimed at developers. These categories describe the 2017 awards’ emphasis; they do not establish which security approaches or products lead today.
The feature also discussed Let’s Encrypt and Certbot in the context of making encrypted web traffic more attainable. Its discussion included the principle, “All web traffic should be encrypted by default.” That is an editorial statement from the 2017 feature, not a quotation attributed to an outside speaker.
Examples across hardware, software, and services
The companion feature ranged beyond developer and enterprise software. Its examples included Amazon Echo and Alexa, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Dashlane, and AWS Server Migration Service, as well as NVIDIA CUDA and Amazon EC2 P2 GPU instances. These are examples from the feature, not an exhaustive list or a current ranking.
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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →In its period-specific discussion, the feature described Echo as a voice interface connected to Amazon and partner services, Alexa skills, AWS Lambda, home automation, and Internet of Things use cases. It discussed GPUs as accelerators for deep-learning workloads. It also described services such as Databricks as managed alternatives to operating Spark and Hadoop infrastructure. Those descriptions reflect the 2017 feature; present-day capabilities and availability may differ.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to read the roundup today
The awards are most useful as a record of what InfoWorld’s editors considered notable in 2017 and of themes that were then gaining attention. The list combines downloadable and open-source software, managed cloud services, enterprise offerings, and physical hardware. Its items therefore cannot be compared as if they were interchangeable products.
For a present-day evaluation of any technology named in the roundup, check current documentation and assess it against the job at hand. Useful comparison dimensions include:
- Deployment: whether the option is self-managed, available as a managed service, or requires dedicated hardware.
- Operations: the work involved in installation, upgrades, monitoring, and ongoing administration.
- Fit and integration: whether its ecosystem and supported connections suit the existing environment and workload.
- Security: the specific protections and controls currently offered, rather than the broad category in which the 2017 feature placed it.
- Cost: current pricing and the costs of infrastructure and operation, which the historical awards account does not establish.
The 2017 reviewers also discussed category-specific tradeoffs—for example, managed Spark compared with operating clusters, and Elastic Stack’s flexibility compared with Splunk’s polish and feature depth. Those are period judgments, not verified current comparisons.
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