The IT Excellence Awards are now a well-recognized channel for encouraging and acknowledging Hong Kong's IT talents. As the popular understanding of the benefits of IT grows and as our citizens look with an increasingly critical and selective eye on the technology industry as a whole ?the value of this award scheme is becoming even greater, for it offers an independent and rigorous evaluation of actual achievement and genuine potential.

I would like to pay tribute to the many individuals and organizations who have worked so tirelessly to ensure a stimulating contest and a lively and informative awards ceremony. Our panel of judges and our assessors have in particular served well beyond the call of duty.

That great father of modern technology, Thomas Edison, famously claimed that invention is "one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration". Not just the winners but all the 53 enterprises who submitted entries this year would no doubt agree! Let us hope, then, that the example they have set of determined hard work will be rewarded by business success and by the acclaim of society. Let us also hope that Hong Kong enterprises will continue to provide the generous support needed to enable these awards to go forward firmly year by year, benefiting Hong Kong and making their mark on the global IT scene.