As I was doing a little research this evening for a client, I hit the SQLMag site for the latest updates.  And, lo and behold, the results of the 2010 SQL Server Magazine's Community Choice Awards are IN!  SQLCentric, the already award-winning monitoring and alert system, has won the SILVER medal for Best Database and Performance Monitoring System!!  Although I rarely use my blog to promote my products and services (but hey, why not? :-), coming off the heals of a successful SQLSaturday#59 event in NYC, this was such a pleasant and unexpected surprise! 

Yeah, we're SILVER, and another known vendor got the GOLD (will remain nameless in this blog - there's plenty of their reps who will be tweeting and blogging about that), and we beat RedGate's sqlresponse v.1 (who got the Bronze), this is an amazing accolade and honor!  (OK, the new one is giving a run for the money, but we have a whole year to strategize our next move and release!)  Considering the size and marketing prowess of my competitors, I am very proud and deeply appreciative of this award!  And, not to mention, we knocked some of the other big leaguers off the scoreboard!

The key word in the Awards' title, is  Community Choice - what the people like and voted for.  They also published the Editor's Choice along side them, which I didn't think this was such a great idea!  Why dilute the impact of the Community's Choice, at least in this issue.  They could've held it back for another upcoming issue, but I guess this decision was indeed the "Editors' Choice" 🙂  But what makes them smarter than the rest of you folks who use these products everyday in your professional life, with real-life experiences, rather than some lab tests?  Besides, who pays for the advertisements, anyway?  I'm not trying to be controversial, and beside, it's my favorite print magazine!

In reflecting about the word "community", they always say give, and you'll always receive!  After putting in a lot of effort, dedication and promotion to help make SQLSaturday#59 a great success, I didn't think it would come back so fast 😉  So, for all those out there who voted for our monitoring product SQLCentric, I truly thank you, and appreciate the vote of confidence!

SQLCentric, the original web-based monitoring and alert system, accessible via intranet and internet, was built by a DBA with the DBA in-mind.  SQLCentric offers the following:

 
 - A fully functional web-based MSSQL-Centric Network Database Monitoring & Alert System.

 - Enterprise class monitoring, NOT Enterprise pricing.

 - An intuitive traffic-light front-end interface

-  Supports SQL Server 2008! – And previous versions 2005, 2000, 7.0 & 6.5

- Extremely easy to install, deploy, manage and use. No complex configuration.

- Minimally invasive to the SQL Servers it monitors, and a no-impact solution.

- No Agents, no triggers, no work databases, and no stored procedures on the monitored servers.

- Identifies troublemakers and bottlenecks that cause poor performance.

- Integrates seamlessly with your e-mail system to provide auto-alerts and follow-up messaging

Includes Monitoring for:

Dynamic Disk Management
Network Connectivity & Uptime
SQL Server Logs
Database SQL Service & Agent Status
Buffer Cache/Memory
Long running queries
Blocked processes
SQL Agent Job Failures
Cluster Failover
CPU Utilization
Database Growth

And more!

We also will introduce shortly, our SQLCentric  v.3.0 & the SQLOS Live Performance Dashboard, with up-to-the-second performance and vital stats of your servers. We demo'd some of the dashboard at this past SQLSaturday.  Stay tuned.

Please visit our site www.pearlknows.com to download an eval, and to set up an online demo, contact us at sqlcentric@pearlknows.com.

Thank you again to the GREAT SQL SERVER community.  And remember, in this economy, GOLD is too expensive - SILVER is much more affordable.