At the opening session on Sunday afternoon, Randy Dufault, COMMON president, and Mark Shearer, IBM vice president of Marketing and Offerings for the Business Systems Division, presented the 2008 Innovation Awards.

The two winners in the small- and midsized-business (fewer than 1,000 employees) Innovation category were Heartland Co-op, of Iowa, and Specialty Pipe and Tube, Inc., of Ohio. In the large enterprise business Innovation category, the two winners were Landstar Systems, of Texas, and FedEx Corporate Services, of Pennsylvania. The final category, education excellence Innovation, had one winner: University of Nebraska -- Lincoln.