NEC today announced that the Computerworld Honors Program has recognized Gregg Paulk, director of Information Technologies for Anderson Center for Autism, as a Laureate for his innovative use of NEC HYDRAstor grid storage to address its storage backup and archive challenges. This year’s Honorees will be commemorated during the 21st Annual Laureates Medal Ceremony & Gala Awards Evening on June 1, 2009 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. For over two decades, Computerworld Honors has acknowledged those individuals and organizations that have used information technology to benefit society.

Anderson Center for Autism is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the highest quality programs possible for children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. Equally important is the organization’s commitment to maintain an ongoing fully integrated support network for their families and guardians. Information technology plays an important role in Anderson Center for Autism’s ability to address these goals.

“Anderson Center for Autism was faced with the daunting task of bringing our IT infrastructure out of the IT Stone Age and converting millions of paper documents stored in trailers offsite to readily-accessible digital archives,” said Gregg Paulk, director of Information Technologies for Anderson Center for Autism. “NEC HYDRAstor provided a cutting-edge technology solution that could tackle existing data backup and archives as well as the future data we expected to accompany our plans for aggressive organizational growth. It’s extremely gratifying to be recognized by the Computerworld Honors Program as the culmination of our efforts.”

Anderson Center for Autism leveraged NEC’s HYDRAstor grid storage technology to unify, optimize, and simplify its backup and archiving needs, while improving IT efficiency and reducing costs. In the end, they eliminated failed tape backups, and reduced their backup window by 90 percent. HYDRAstor’s DataRedux is a key green initiative for Anderson Center of Autism enabling IT to store 44TBs of data in 1TB of physical disk space.

“It’s fabulous that Gregg is receiving this recognition for being a pioneer in implementing cutting-edge technology to benefit society and so appropriate during National Autism Awareness month,” said Karen Dutch, vice president of marketing, NEC Corporation of America. “As a partner in Anderson Center for Autism’s IT transformation, we applaud Gregg and his team in this achievement.”

NEC’s HYDRAstor is part of NEC’s Dynamic IT Infrastructure — a solution that includes servers, storage, virtual desktop solutions, and system software which are smart, flexible, adaptive to change, scalable, resilient, and continuously evolving. Along with NEC’s complete range of services — the NEC Dynamic IT Infrastructure provides an ideal platform for virtualization, consolidation and business continuity and is ideal for driving greater value and efficiencies in solutions for physical security, law enforcement, emergency response, travel and entertainment, education, high performance computing, and business. This type of infrastructure allows IT organizations to move forward confidently and meet changing and growing business needs in an efficient manner.

“Each Laureate selected for this honor understands the importance of using one’s resources and technical prowess to benefit one’s fellow man,” said Bob Carrigan, Chairman of the Computerworld Honors Program Chairmen’s Committee and President, IDG Communications.

The Computerworld Honors Program unites Chairmen and CEOs of the world’s foremost information technology companies to recognize the most outstanding user achievements in technology each year. The technology achievements honored by this program are preserved and protected in national archives, and in over 350 universities, museums, and research institutions throughout the world. Each year, members of the Chairmen's Committee, a group of 100 Chairman/CEOs of global technology companies, nominates individuals and organizations around the world whose visionary applications of information technology promotes positive social and economic progress.