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ACE Award Winners
In one form or another, the ACE Awards have been around for 14 years. We started this program in 1995, calling it the AzTech 50 Awards. The goal then was to recognize the 50 fastest-growing, high-technology companies in the state.
Over the years, we have modified the program to better fit the community and to better meet the needs of the companies or industries we were trying to recognize. In 1999 we changed the name from AzTech 50 to FasTech 50 Awards. At that point we began to allow all technology-oriented companies to participate, rather than try to differentiate high-tech from low-tech.
Then, due to the downturn in the technology industry, we again changed the name from FasTech 50 to ACE Awards in 2002. For that first year of the ACE Awards, we decided to allow both public and private companies to participate. Only starting in 2003 did we begin to restrict participation in the ACE Awards to private companies. We did this because we felt most public companies get enough recognition and, with their PR machines working full-time, did not need our help in publicizing their results and the many good things they do in our community.
Private companies, especially smaller ones, do a great deal of good in our community that goes completely unnoticed and unpublicized. It is this group that we felt deserves more recognition for their many efforts. Hence, the ACE Awards is now focused only on privately-owned companies.
Remember, participation is wholly voluntary on the part of the participating companies. If a company does not complete a nomination form and submit all information, and allow the information submitted to be independently verified by the ACE group, a company will not be considered for the list.
Choose a year below to see a short history of that year and the winners on the list.