The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has announced the shortlist for their iAwards, the first government-led initiative to recognise the best of British science, technology and innovation.

Among the nominations was AlertMe, which was voted to fight it out for the crown of the iAward for energy and environment, going up against AMEE UK and Siemens Mobility for the inaugural award.

The company allows users to visualise their energy usage in real time and money as well as automating usage optimisation, analysing home temperatures and working with automatic switch-off technology to control appliance use.

A spokeswoman for AlertMe explained that the organisation is excited about being a part of the iAwards and is honoured to make it onto the shortlist, explaining that it sees the world of energy-efficient and green technology being well-matched to small businesses in IT.

She continued: "There has been a lot of talk about what can be done in the future to reverse the effects of global warming, but where we are very focused, and think there's a lot of room for innovation, is on technology that consumers and businesses can use to make changes today."

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.