Amtrak Sows the Seeds of Innovation, With Help From Hand Held Products

Phil Young, Head of IT Operations for Amtrak, the express parcel carrier specialist, has won the CIO (Chief Information Officer) Innovator of the Year Award for 2006.

This was presented for his work with smaller companies such as UnIQue ID. UnIQue ID is a Business Solution Partner of Hand Held Products, the world's leading supplier of image-based data capture systems.

The prestigious award is sponsored by UK Technology Innovation and Growth, a commercial body that represents the IT industry. Amtrak has been using solutions from Hand Held Products for about three years, and has worked closely with UnIQue ID to exploit their full potential. The company has worked on a range of models, including Hand Held Products' world-renowned family of Dolphin(R) mobile computers, handheld imagers, and fixed scanning equipment.

Phil Young says: "I am delighted to have won this award on behalf of Amtrak. When we started using Hand Held Products' devices, they were already at the cutting edge of technology. UnIQue ID helped us to set up our wireless systems, within our hubs that sort parcels around the UK. UnIQue ID helped us to wirelessly interface their scanners with our IT Infrastructure. This was also hugely innovative work - we believe that no other company in our sector has done anything like it before."

He adds: "Over the last three years, we have placed in the region off GBP1.5 million of orders for Hand Held Products' solutions, much of it through UnIQue ID. They have come up with some great ideas on how we could use the solutions to meet a variety of business needs. It's great to see that a major company like Hand Held Products has such exceptional partners, who are capable of thinking outside the box."