While you’re reading this article, hundreds of thousands of IT professionals around the world are configuring servers, fighting spam, answering help desk calls, and helping keep websites like this one running. They often work long hours, come to work when everyone else is sleeping, and sometimes sacrifice time with family and loved ones over holidays and weekends to make sure that an essential IT service is maintained or stays accessible. IT professionals have also endured one of the most stressful periods for the IT field in recent memory, with budget cuts on one side and threats from outsourcing and and cloud computing on the other. Every IT pro I know has stories like these to tell. That’s why we’re happy to announce our first ever System Administrator of the Year contest. Do you know an IT professional that everyone turns to for advice or calls when nobody else can resolve a problem? If you know a system administrator that fits that description, please nominate them (or yourself) by following the link below to our online entry form. > Enter the System Administrator of the Year Contest < The grand prize winner will receive an Apple iPad 2, an Xbox 360 with Kinect, and a host of other prizes from sponsors TrainSignal, Specops Software and Scriptlogic. Visit the System Administrator of the Year contest page for more details. We’d also like to thank our media sponsors (Windows IT Pro, Cloud IT Pro, SharePoint Pro and Business Technology) and our community sponsors (GITCA and System Admin Appreciation Day founder Ted Kekatos) for their help in spreading the world about the contest. Know any IT pros that deserve to be called System Administrator of the Year? Let me know what you think by commenting on this blog post or following me on Twitter. Follow Jeff James on Twitter at @jeffjames3 Follow Business Technology on Twitter at @BizTechMag Related Content: Icebergs and iSCSI: Building the Next-Gener