Global asset management company Schroders was announced the ‘overall winner’ of The Corporate IT Forum’s Real IT Awards 2008.Devised and funded by and for large-scale users of IT, The Real IT Awards represents the IT user community coming together to recognise and reward the ‘best of breed’ IT business projects of the year.Schroders’ IT team won the top prize - presented last night - for their Book of Record IT project, a highly innovative back office IT platform which saves costs by simplifying operations across the company’s administrative functions. Judges praised the project for its “clarity and drive” and for being a “very well articulated and executed project”.

Awards were also presented to Virgin Atlantic which won in the ‘innovation’ category for its Limo Drive Through project. The airline’s project uses a combination of technologies to provide a unique level of service to upper class passengers. Judges praised the team at Virgin Atlantic for delivering a project that was a “business-critical differentiator” for the company.

In addition, Hampshire County Council’s IT team was presented with category awards for their Recruitment Portal project which was viewed by the judges to be “highly cost effective” and for the implementation of their IT Service Management programme which the judges praised as a “stand-out piece of work”.

Runner-up awards were presented to IT teams from companies such as: Infineum, British Airways, Warburtons, The British Council, GlaxoSmithKline and Eversheds.

More information on all the projects can be found here.