The iAwards are Australia’s leading awards program for recognising and rewarding Australian innovation.

This year, more than 600 entries were received from government, startups, corporates and students. Entrants competed in five base award categories across business services, community services, consumer, industrial & primary services, and public sector & government as well as student categories and cross categories.

Optika Solutions Managing Director, Matthew Schneider said, “I am incredibly proud that Optika’s efforts with the development of Akumen have been recognised by the AIIA.

We know that Akumen is a revolutionary product, full of complexity and opportunity, and we are honoured to not only have won our category, ‘Big Data’, but to have Akumen awarded Innovation of the Year is truly fantastic.”

Launched in 2014, Akumen is an innovative, cloudbased simulation and data modelling tool that operates on a whole of industry scale.

For the first time, it brings people and data together in one unique, dynamic and completely collaborative environment to give true insight into operations and opportunities.

Akumen’s unique advantage is its capacity to process vast quantities of data, be it data at rest (what has happened in the past), data in action (what is happening now) and data with potential (insight into the future landscape) which offers clients a superior tool to manage, model and represent data relevant to their business at any point in time.

Optika Solutions CEO, Professor Steve Hannah, said, “We have been working hard to tell the story of Akumen in a way that makes sense to non-technical professionals.

By removing the technical complexities of data science, we have created a user-friendly platform that allows users to focus on outcomes faster, more efficiently and with a greater depth of insight.”

“We couldn’t be more proud to have been selected as the winner of the Innovation of the Year Award at the iAwards. Being afforded the opportunity to showcase Akumen to an international audience through the APICTA Awards is sensational. The world is changing rapidly, and we are proud to be driving growth and innovation from Western Australia”.

As winner of the Innovation of the Year Award, Akumen developers Optika Solutions Pty Ltd will later this year travel to Chinese Taipei on an all-expenses-paid trip to compete in the esteemed international APICTA Awards.