Leica Fotopark wins “Best in Cloud Award 2014”, still under developement



Leica Camera won “Best in Cloud Award 2014” for their new cloud service called Leica Fotopark (www.leica-fotopark.com), even tough the service is still in development:

Leica Camera AG, Wetzlar, has been presented with the Best in Cloud Award 2014 for the Leica Fotopark, its online digital services platform for the secure storage, processing and archiving of pictures. The Leica premium service was awarded the title in the category ‘Cloud Enabling Infrastructure’. Hosting for the premium Web platform, which premiered at photokina 2014, is provided by Claranet GmbH, a cloud service provider located in Germany. As in previous years, a jury of experts chose the winning cloud projects that were presented to a wide audience of industry experts on 22 and 23 October 2014 in Frankfurt am Main. At the two-day conference, a total of 21 finalists had another opportunity to promote their projects in a six-minute presentation and answer critical questions from the jury members. The winners were announced yesterday, the second day of the conference, as part of a gala event.

This year’s competition, Best in Cloud 2014, was the fourth time that Computerwoche, the German weekly publication for CIOs and IT managers, set out to find the best cloud projects. The rating process focused primarily on core features such as innovation, business potential and, above all, data security. The Leica Fotopark convinced the expert jury with its innovative infrastructure that enables excellent performance despite high data volumes and simultaneously gives utmost priority to the users’ security needs.

The Best in Cloud Award 2014 was awarded in a total of four categories:

Software as a Service (public, private/hybrid), Infrastructure as a Service (public, private/hybrid), Platform as a Service (public, private/hybrid) and Cloud Enabling Infrastructure.

Independent of the categories, the jury also awarded an innovation prize and a prize for the ‘Best Business Idea’. The jury members included Peter Burghardt (techconsult GmbH), Karin Sondermann (techconsult GmbH), Manuel Fischer (BITKOM), Dr Wolfgang Martin (Wolfgang Martin Team), Dr Stefan Ried (Forrester Research), Frank P. Sempert (Saugatuck Technology Inc.), Prof. Stefan Tai (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Dr Carlo Velten (Crisp Research), René Büst (Crisp Research) and Horst Westerfeld (secretary of state, retired).

With the Leica Fotopark (www.leica-fotopark.com), Leica Camera AG presents an online platform that sets the focus in the digitally connected world on what is truly essential – the picture. The premium Web platform offers photographers of all kinds, from beginners and ambitious amateurs to professionals, a multitude of intuitive functions, including the storage, processing, management and archiving of digital images and a premium print service for ordering photos and fine-art prints. What’s more, the Leica Fotopark is home to a community that serves as a virtual meeting place where photographers can find inspiration and exchange their views on photography. With this new user-friendly, highly versatile, reliably accessible and absolutely secure concept, Leica embraces the entire process from creating pictures and secure storage to sharing the captured memories.