KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2015

We published our first KMWorld Trend-Setting Products list nearly a decade-and-a-half ago because we wanted to bring some clarity to the sometimes elusive knowledge management needs of our subscribers. As we do with our KMWorld 100 Companies That Matter list, we established a judging panel of colleagues, market and technology analysts, KM theoreticians and practitioners, customers and a select few savvy users in a variety of disciplines to identify products that fulfill the ultimate goal of knowledge management—delivering the right information to the right people at the right time.

Throughout the yearlong collaborative judging process, we looked at more than 200 vendors, whose combined product lineups include more than 1,000 separate offerings. Although the standards we set for inclusion on any of KMWorld’s lists are high, we didn’t develop a formal, rigid set of criteria that needed to be met for inclusion on this year’s. As in years past, though, we all agreed that usability, flexibility, adoption rate and total cost of ownership were valuable components for inclusion. Our committee further agreed that each company/product listed holds the promise for the marketplace—even if the marketplace has yet to realize it.

In each and every case, the thoughtfulness and elegance of the software certainly warrants further investigation, and we’re confident that a number of products listed below will dramatically boost the productivity of any type of organization. You’ll note that some of the products have appeared on the list before—sometimes the market needs a little nudge. Nevertheless, the products and their developers share a focus on addressing customer needs. It’s always good to know that customers at every level of the value chain are the true benefactors of knowledge management.

Not all the offerings listed were launched in 2015; some have been around for a while, a testimony to the limber execution of their initial mission of adaptability. Others are relatively new, and their uniqueness points to (what we believe should be) their much wider adoption.

Are these the only trend-setting products on the market? No, of course not, but they do represent the ones best suited to meet the needs of KMWorld readers, and all have been designed with a clear understanding of customers’ needs.

The judging process has already started for next year’s list, and we’ll continue to welcome and take special note of unsolicited recommendations for list inclusion from customers actually deploying specific products. We encourage readers to send your thoughts and suggestions to the judging panel at judging@kmworld.com.

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ABBYY: FlexiCapture—accurate and scalable document imaging and data extraction software designed to transform documents of any structure, language or content into usable and accessible data. Click here for more product details.

Accellion: kiteworks for Symantec—enhanced mobile security features to reduce the risk of data leakage.

AccessData: Summation 5.6—updated version of the company’s flagship e-discovery software platform with new features to improve case organization, analysis and collaboration.

Access Innovations: Data Harmony 3.1—suite providing content management solutions to improve information organization by systematically applying a taxonomy or thesaurus in total integration.

Accusoft: Prizm Content Connect—HTML document viewer that displays dozens of document and image file types while allowing people to view, annotate, redact, search and sign. Click here for more product details.

Adaptive Software: RxFlex—management platform for pharmacy benefit managers, health plans and hospitals, bringing the entire formulary management process together.

Adlib Software: PDF OEM—PDF rendering engine enabling independent software vendors to rapidly embed document-to-PDF conversion and assembly capabilities into their applications.

Appian: Appian BPM Platform—application development platform that allows building, deploying and using organizational business apps.

Aptean: Pivotal 6.5—enterprise-grade CRM solution for sales automation, marketing management and customer service delivery.

Astera Software: ReportMiner 6.2—data extraction software for freeing business data trapped in printed documents for integration into a company’s database for operations and business intelligence applications.

Atlassian: JIRA—bug tracking, issue tracking and project management for software development teams.

Attensity: Attensity Q—social listening text analytics solution powered by intelligent natural language processing technology.

Attivio: Attivio 5.0—software platform designed to accelerate business intelligence and big data projects by reducing the time it takes to profile, identify and unify all relevant data for analysis, from weeks or months to minutes.

AvePoint: Perimeter Service Pack (SP) 4—allows users to increase productivity by allowing them to securely collaborate on SharePoint documents stored in the platform with anyone while maintaining control over the content with rich administrator options.

BA Insight: InfoSites for SharePoint—application that enables users to easily create and share knowledge centers and intranet pages around topics of interest. Click here for more product details.

Bamboo Solutions: Workflow Conductor 4.0—completely rebuilt browser-based designer to make SharePoint workflow creation faster, easier and more reliable.

Birst: Birst 5X—BI application designed to adapt to each person’s unique style for working with data without forcing people into rigid user roles.

Bloomfire: mobile apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry—redesigned apps enabling users to share knowledge, learn and collaborate.

Box: Box cloud content management platform—allows users to securely work across teams, with customers and with partners on any device anywhere.

BP Logix: Process Director 4.0—BPM software offering advances in governance, development methodology and goal orientation.

Brainspace: Brainspace Discovery—an unstructured data analytics and e-discovery solution employing machine learning technology and data visualization capabilities to discover answers and insights from millions of documents. Click here for more product details.

Bridgeline Digital: iAPPS Content Manager—Web engagement management platform that can be delivered as either a true SaaS multitenant environment or a traditional dedicated server environment.

Calabrio: Calabrio ONE—comprehensive and fully integrated solution for workforce optimization in contact centers.

Cambridge Semantics: Anzo Smart Data Platform—offers industry-defined semantic models or company-defined models to link and manage diverse data.

Clarabridge: Clarabridge 7—allows various teams throughout an enterprise to collect, distill actionable insights and instantly view, collaborate and act on omnichannel customer feedback data.

Clarizen: Clarizen V. 6—Powerful collaborative work management software, bringing together cross-company project management, configurable workflow automation and purposeful collaboration in an enterprise-grade platform.

Code42: —Code 42 Platform: Endpoint data governance for control, security and productivity with private, public or hybrid cloud deployments.

Codifyd: Product Content Solutions—e-commerce design, implementation and maintenance strategies intended to reduce costs, speed time to market, boost revenue and create improved shopping experiences for buyers.

CognitiveScale: CognitiveU—comprehensive cognitive computing training curriculum for systems integrators, enterprise IT professionals and application developers.

Colligo: Engage platform—blends existing enterprise information systems such as SharePoint, Office 365, OneDrive for Business and Exchange through a suite of applications across desktop and mobile devices.

Concept Searching: conceptClassifier for SharePoint—semantic metadata generation, automatic document classification and enterprise-grade taxonomy management.

Connotate: Version 4.3—Platform to harvest and monetize Web content that includes a new browser engine along with productivity advancements that make it faster to build and publish Connotate agents.

Content Analyst Company: CAAT V. 3.17—machine-learning text analytics engine extensively integrated into software applications serving the legal community for e-discovery, information governance, contract life cycle management, intellectual property management and information services.

Coveo: Coveo Cloud—enterprise search platform capable of securely unifying content from on-premise and cloud systems via a single, cloud-based index and presenting people with proactive, contextually relevant content on any device.

Datawatch: Managed Analytics Platform—enables non-technical users to create rich, interactive data-driven solutions to complex business problems quickly and inexpensively. Click here for more product details.

Eccentex: Dynamic Case Management Template 3.0 for AppBase—prebuilt functionality to accelerate development of enterprise case management applications by business analysts, rather than seasoned developers.

eGain: eGain Knowledge—omnichannel knowledge platform for both agent-assisted and self-service. Click here for more product details.

Embarcadero: ER/Studio Data Architect V. 10.0—allows reverse- and forward-engineering, comparing, merging and visually documenting data assets across multiple platforms and data sources.

EMC: Project Horizon—a content platform and apps marketplace designed to help CIOs and enterprises drive their digital agenda, strengthen their competitive advantage and harness the value of business content.

Empolis: Empolis Smart Content—a full-featured solution platform for any component content management application.

Expert System/TEMIS: Cogito Platform—multilingual technology that understands the meaning of words based on an advanced semantic analysis engine and a complete semantic network.

Exterro: E-Discovery Data Management—early case assessments, collections, analysis, review and productions internally to better assess matter issues, size and resource requirements in the discovery process.

FTI Consulting: Ringtail Audio Discovery—allows legal teams to search, review, redact and produce audio recordings alongside e-mail and other documents as part of the legal review process.

Hitachi Consulting: Customer Experience Solutions—end-to-end solutions comprised of rich content management features, flexible promotions framework as well as affiliate marketing capabilities.

HP: Haven Predictive Analytics—software to accelerate and operationalize large-scale machine learning and statistical analysis.

Hyland Software: OnBase 15—more than 2,000 customer-focused enhancements and new functionality to help organizations digitize their operations, accelerate their processes and empower professionals with timely and relevant information.

IBM: Watson Analytics—smart data discovery service available in the cloud, guiding data exploration, automating predictive analytics and enabling dashboard and infographic creation.

iCONECT: iCONECT-XERA—ligation support software designed to enhance workflow, productivity, efficiency and accuracy to optimize the full document review process.

Incentive: Incentive File Sharing—allows integration of disparate file sharing systems into one searchable platform.

Ingeniux: Ingeniux CMS—Web experience management software for managing content, community and collaboration. Click here for more product details.

Integrify: Integrify V. 6—100 percent Web-based solution for enterprise request management that enables companies to quickly reduce cost and improve employee satisfaction by providing process definition, workflow automation and visibility into process activities.

Intellect: Intellect MobileApps—enables knowledge workers to easily and quickly build a single app or an entire library of mobile business process apps without requiring any programming.

IntelliResponse: ANSWERS—employs a set of customizable rules that define the types of natural language questions that should match with a particular response.

K2: Integration with Box—integrating K2’s Appit and blackpearl platforms with the Box cloud content management platform.

Kapow: Katalyst 9.5—integration and automation platform that includes analytics capabilities that deliver out-of-the-box dashboards to provide insight into information, processes and performance.

kCura: Relativity Version 9—includes updated interface and improved user experience made up of more than 120 new features.

KMS Lighthouse: Lighthouse Desktop—provides agents on all channels with real-time, on-the-spot access to the information they need to optimize customer service and to transform customer engagement into sales.

Kofax TotalAgility 7.2—latest edition of the company’s flagship product and with new digital transaction management capabilities to eliminate traditional paper-based, information-intensive processes.

Linguamatics: I2E V. 4.3—text mining software that enables answering business-critical questions by rapidly extracting relevant facts and relationships from large document collections.

Magnitude Software: NoetixAnalytics 5.4—new content, support for Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2, performance enhancements, streamlined maintenance and other upgrades. Click here for more details.

MarkLogic: MarkLogic 8—database technology that helps organizations to quickly integrate, search, analyze and operationalize heterogeneous data.

Metalogix: Service Manager for Office 365—platform providing administrators with the ability to provision both users and content across the entire Office 365 suite, reducing infrastructure complexity while cutting IT costs.

Mindbreeze: InSpire appliance—quickly and extensively gathers information from both internal data sources and cloud applications for companywide access. Click here for more details.

OpenText: Tempo Box Premium Edition—a secure and governed solution to share and synchronize personal and enterprise SAP content across different platforms and devices. Click here for more details.

Oracle/RightNow: RightNow Service Cloud—combines multichannel, call center, customer self-service and social customer service capabilities so brands can stand out from the crowd.

Parascript: FormXtra Capture 6.0—document capture, classification and recognition with a new receipt data extraction module.

Provalis Research: WordStat for Stata—integrated text analytics software package.

QUMU: Peer Delivery—enables enterprises to provide high-performance video to globally distributed parts of their organizations such as branch offices or storefronts.

Raytion: SharePoint 2013 search connectors—complete family of connectors allowing customers to index content from a variety of sources.

RSD: RSD GLASS Policy Manager—allows information management professionals to create new policies on how corporate information should be governed without needing to install any software in their IT environments.

Saffron: Natural Intelligence Platform V. 10—cognitive computing platform that enables connections among data across diverse sources without the need for rules or modeling, while learning incrementally and anticipating outcomes based on patterns it finds in the data.

SDL: XMT—new modular, flexible and adaptive translation technology powered by learning algorithms to improve translation quality and user experience.

Search Technologies: Aspire for Elasticsearch—content processing framework developed primarily for handling unstructured data for customers to clean, enrich and normalize content ingested by Elasticsearch.

SearchBlox Software: SearchBlox 8.2—an advanced integration module making indexing content with SharePoint easier and allows for federated search of SharePoint, Alfresco, CMIS Servers, Documentum, Dropbox, FileNet, GridFS, Hadoop File System, Jira, Meridio, etc.

Semantic Web: PoolParty Suite—metadata management, semantic search and text mining.

Sherpa Software: Sherpa Altitude IG—integrated modules, enterprise-grade governance capabilities to manage and govern information across a wide array of content, including both structured and unstructured data.

Silanis: e-SignLive by Silanis—flexible, scalable electronic signature solution for midsize to large organizations automating compliance-driven customer transactions.

Sinequa: Sinequa ES V. 9.0—integration and use of Hadoop along with new connectors to data sources to refine language analysis in 19 supported languages.

Sitecore: Sitecore Experience Platform 8—enables marketers to create, deliver and optimize unique digital experiences with their prospects and customers through the customer life cycle.

Smartlogic: Semaphore Platform—ontology management, metadata enrichment, search, security and visualization tools.

SpringCM: SpringCM platform—a cloud platform that manages documents, contracts and all related collateral; includes document workflows tailored to improve business processes and boost team collaboration.

Synaptica: Enterprise Taxonomy Management—behind-the-firewall solution for larger organizations and designed to support multiple editors with role-based access to a suite of integration tools, including database APIs and Web services.

Systemware: Content Cloud 6.0—private cloud deployed on premises, designed to maximize the value of enterprise content by providing accessibility, infrastructure resiliency and cost efficiencies.

TIBCO: Spotfire 7—analytics and data visualization platform designed to empower users of all skill levels to gain insights faster.

Transversal: Web Self-Service—software powering a self-learning knowledgebase engineered to enhance customer interaction and provide deep and valuable insight into every customer or trend. Click here for more details.

Verint Systems: Enterprise Workforce Optimization—solutions to help organizations use the voice of the customer to drive operational excellence and align business processes around their customers’ requirements. Click here for more details.

VirtualWorks: ViaWorks for Azure—technologies to migrate and manage document discovery between on-premise, private and public clouds in a controlled, seamless and automated fashion.

Workshare: Workshare Professional 9—allows documents to be compared, edited and collaborated on in a single application.

X1: X1 Search 8.3.3—unified desktop search across multiple data sources with Boolean, proximity and keyword search, as well as preview of more than 500 file types.

ZL Technologies: ZL Enterprise Analytics—deep analytics functionality into ZL’s Unified Archive big data governance platform.