I agree with the Star Alliance thoughts as another award option. It was important to us to go Business Class on the trip. At the time of booking, nothing was available from home airports.
We ended up booking Austrian JFK-VIE-FCO for the way over. Originally, all we could get coming back was SAS through CPH into EWR. That was fine, but we were lucky enough to be able to switch to a US Airways nonstop to PHL, much closer to home, from FCO for the return.
Austrian Business Class was wonderful.