KMWorld 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management

Twelve years ago, when we published our first list, a host of vendors were attempting to serve the business community by layering bell upon whistle upon bell, hoping something might gain traction. Those were the earliest days of irrational exuberance, and many startups were targeting a developing knowledge management market, but merely making empty promises of true solutions. You likely remember those days-some of the software was simply breathtaking in its design but lots of shine with little substance.

So, because we were taking the lead in defining the knowledge management market, we created our first list of 100 Companies That Matter. We assembled a team of judges comprised of colleagues, analysts, system integrators, theorists, practitioners and a few select users to identify companies that were providing true solutions to real and profound problems and challenges.

Everyone involved in the judging process has his or her prejudices, of course, but we set those aside (for the most part) and assembled the list  you see here, 100 companies whose products and services best meet the needs of our readership. I'm sure not all of you are familiar with each company, but I'd wager you're knowledgeable about a good majority of them. And I promise that each of you can find a solution to critical business problems through the products and services of at least one of these companies.

And, as we keep reminding, we view knowledge management not as an application per se, rather a commitment to help harvest an organization's collective intelligence to best serve its entire constituency chain.

To be sure, these aren't the only companies that "matter," but these 100 companies have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to their customers by helping to harvest an organization's collective intelligence in order to best serve its entire constituency chain.

View from the Top

We encourage you to visit the Web sites of the 100 companies we listed. You'll see why we selected these companies. You can hear from the companies themselves in the special View from the Top section. Here, CEO and other top officials share their vision of the knowledge economy and how their solutions allow their customers to reach their goals.

A2iA — Natural handwriting recognition, intelligent word recognition (IWR) and intelligent character recognition (ICR) technologies. ABBYY USA — Optical character recognition, document capture and language software for both PC and mobile devices. To Learn more, read ABBYY USA President and CEO Dean Tang's View From the Top Accellion — Enterprise-class, secure file sharing solutions for mobile-enabled organizations. AccessData — Digital investigations and litigation support. Accusoft — Document, content and imaging solutions. To Learn more, read Accusoft Founder, President Jack Berlin's View From the Top Acquia — Products, services and technical support for the open source Drupal social publishing system. To Learn more, read Acquia CEO Tom Erickson's View From the Top Alfresco — Open source enterprise content management system developer for Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems. Altep — Document management, electronic discovery and litigation support. AnyDoc Software — Automated document, data capture and classification solutions. To Learn more, read AnyDoc Software President, Samuel L. Schrage's View From the Top Appian — Business process management software, including solutions for mobile devices, cloud computing and social business. Apple — Business and consumer software and hardware. ASG Software Solutions — Professional services and software solutions for management of metadata, applications, operations, content, performance, security, management and infrastructure. Attensity — Social analytics and engagement solutions. Attivio — Integration of enterprise search, business intelligence and analytics. AvePoint — Enterprise-class governance and infrastructure management solutions for SharePoint. BA Insight — Integrated search technologies and search-based applications that help organizations fully leverage SharePoint and FAST Search across the enterprise and in the cloud. Bamboo Solutions — Software to help organizations save significant time and money by deploying and managing applications, data and users on SharePoint. Box — Online file sharing and cloud content management services. BP Logix — Business process management solutions designed to provide the critical data needed to run businesses. Brainware — Intelligent data capture and enterprise search solutions. To Learn more, read Brainware President James Zubok's View From the Top Bridgeline Digital — Web experience management and interactive technology solutions that help organizations optimize business processes. Citrix — Virtualization, networking, collaboration and cloud technologies. Clarabridge — Sentiment and text analytics software. Concept Searching — Software products that deliver conceptual metadata generation, auto-classification and powerful taxonomy management. To Learn more, read Concept Searching CEO/CTO's John Challis's View From the Top Connotate — Web data monitoring and collection for the business user. Consona — Customer service and support solutions built around an enterprise scale knowledge management platform. Content Analyst — Search and analytics for unstructured text. To Learn more, read Content Analyst President & CEO Kurt Michel's View From the Top Copyright Clearance Center — Solutions that simplify the licensing of content that lets businesses and academic institutions quickly get permission to use copyright-protected materials, while compensating publishers and content creators for the use of their works. Coveo — Modular and scalable enterprise search platform that indexes information stored in various repositories throughout the enterprise. Datawatch — Information analytics systems through data extraction from static, but content-rich, sources. To Learn more, read Datawatch President & CEO Michael Morrison's View From the Top Digital Reef — Software for e-discovery and digital information governance. eGain — On-premise or cloud software for knowledge-powered, multichannel sales and service. Ektron — .Net Web content management integrated with marketing optimization and social software. EMC — Information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations to transform the way they compete and create value from information. eTouch — Enterprise consulting services. Exalead — Search-based application platform for business and government. Exsys — Software that provides non-programmers a new way to build interactive Web applications. To Learn more, read Exsys President Dustin Huntington's View From the Top FirstRain — Semantic categorization analytics. FTI Technology — E-discovery software and services. To Learn more, read FTI Technology Global Practice Leader Seth Rierson's View From the Top Google — Technology solutions for search, voice, analytics, documents, geospacial applications, etc. HiSoftware — Content-aware compliance and security solutions for the monitoring and enforcement of risk management and privacy guidelines across digital environments. Hivemine — AskMe social business software. To Learn more, read Hivemine CEO Peter Holland's View From the Top HP/Autonomy, an HP Company — Enterprise infrastructure software designed to help organizations derive meaning and value from information and mitigate the associated risks. IBM — Complete portfolio of enterprise content technologies and solutions. iDatix — iSynergy document management solution designed to solve transactional and paper-based problems in accounting, human resources, customer service and operations. To Learn more, read iDatix CEO Steve Allen's View From the Top IGLOO Software — Social business software. IntelliResponse — Software platform that allows customers and service agents to ask questions in natural language. ISYS Search Software — Embedded search and universal information access solutions. Jive Software — Social networking, collaboration software, community software, and social media monitoring. JustSystems — Content life cycle solutions.

K2 — Process-driven applications. KANA — Solutions that unify business process, case and knowledge management for customer service organizations. Kapow Software — Automated data integration. kCura — Web-based platform servicing the analysis, review, and production stages of the e-discovery reference model. To Learn more, read kCura President & CEO Andrew Sieja's View From the Top KnowledgeLake — Document imaging related products and solutions for SharePoint. Kofax — Data capture and workflow solutions. LucidWorks (formerly Lucid Imagination) — Apache Solr/Lucene open source enterprise search technology. MarkLogic — Purpose-built database for unstructured information. To Learn more, read MarkLogic EVP & COO Keith Carlson's View From the Top Metalogix — Content life cycle management solutions for SharePoint. To Learn more, read Metalogix VP of Global Marketing Mandy Sadowski's View From the Top Microsoft — Complete software solutions for home and office. Mindbreeze — Enterprise search, information access and data cognition. To Learn more, read Mindbreeze Managing Director Daniel Fallman's View From the Top Moxie Software — Enterprise social software for employee and customer engagement. NavigationArts — Enterprise Web design and development. To Learn more, read NaviagationArts CEO Leo Mullen's View From the Top NewsGator Technologies — Enterprise social computing solutions with direct integration with SharePoint's collaboration platform. Noetix — Instant operational reporting and packaged analytics for Oracle applications. To Learn more, read Noetix President & CEO Morris Beaton's View From the Top OpenText — Collaborative commerce solutions for e-business that enable users to extend and build BPM, CRM, SCM and ERP applications. Oracle/Endeca/FatWire — Integrated business software and hardware systems. Percussion — Web content management and marketing solutions. Pingar — Solutions to transform unstructured data into business intelligence. piXlogic — Search engine that automatically analyzes and searches images and video based on their visual content. Project Performance Corp. — Consulting firm addressing the energy, environment, financial, healthcare and insurance industries. To Learn more, read CEO Mike Freeman's View From the Top Qontext is now AutoDesk  — Social collaboration software. Quest Software — Solutions for application management, database management, Windows management and IT management. Raytion — Solutions for enterprise search, digital archiving, portals and collaboration. Recommind — E-discovery, enterprise search and information governance. Reprints Desk — Solutions for companies to obtain and use scientific, technical and medical literature. RightAnswers — Knowledge management, self-service and knowledgebase development tools. Rivet Logic — Solutions for content management, collaboration and community. To Learn more, read Rivet Logic President and CEO Mike Vertal's View From the Top RSD — Software for business information delivery, content and records management, and document archiving and retrieval. To Learn more, read CEO Pierre Van Beneden's View From the Top SAP — Enterprise software for managing business operations and customer relations. SAS Text Analytics — Unstructured content solutions using linguistic rules and statistical methods to automatically assess, analyze and act upon the insight buried in electronic text. SDL — Solutions to deliver a targeted customer experience. To Learn more, read SDL CEO John Hunter's View From the Top Search Technologies — Search engine implementation and tuning. Sherpa Software — E-mail management software specifically designed to address archiving, e-discovery, PST management and compliance requirements for Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. environments. Sitecore — Content management software that integrates with marketing automation, intranet portal, e-commerce, web optimization, social media and campaign management technologies. Siteworx — Solutions for search, analytics, Web content management and Web strategies. To Learn more, read President Tim McLaughlin's View From the Top Smartlogic — Taxonomy management and automatic classification. Socialtext — Social networking software for microblogging, blogs, wikis, profiles and social spreadsheets. SpringCM — Cloud-based enterprise content, document and workflow management. StoredIQ — Range of integrated solutions for fast response to litigation and investigations. To Learn more, read StoredIQ CEO Phil Myer's View From the Top Symantec — Security, storage and systems management solutions. Synaptica — Tools to help streamline and automate building and deploying taxonomies. Telligent — Enterprise social community and work force collaboration software. TIBCO — Infrastructure software for companies to use on-premise or as part of cloud computing environments. Traction Software — Social software platform. Vivisimo — Search and information optimization solutions. Wall Street Network — Knowledge management for SharePoint. To Learn more, read Wall Street Network COO & CFO Kristina Mazelis's View From the Top Workshare — Document collaboration software. ZL Technologies — Corporate archiving solutions for e-discovery, records management, regulatory compliance, corporate governance, and storage management. ZyLAB — E-discovery and information management solutions.