In October 2005, Search400.com invited companies in the iSeries/i5 market to nominate their products for the 2005 Products of the Year Awards. To be eligible for consideration, a product had to have been introduced or significantly upgraded between Sept. 30, 2004, and Oct. 1, 2005. For previously available products, the upgrade must have incorporated major new features, designed to meet new or evolving needs in the marketplace. Not all companies invited to participate submitted nominations.

Products were nominated for specific categories -- Security Software, High Availability Products, Application Development Tools (includes application development for the Web), Document/Image Management software (includes printing and output), Business-to-Business Solutions, and Backup and Recovery Tools. Due to a lack of backup and recovery tool submissions, that category was dropped.

Each of the remaining categories had its own set of judges, who rated the products on a scale of 1-5 (5 being the best) in six categories -- innovation, performance, ease of integration into environment, ease of use and manageability, functionality, and value. The judges' ratings were tallied separately, then averaged with the other judges' ratings to come up with a single rating. If there was a tie, the judges evaluated the products a second time to determine which product they thought was better.