KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2009

We first published our list of Trend-Setting Products in 2003, when portals and smart enterprise suites were hot, and robust content management offerings were entering adulthood. Folks were wondering about the scope of the Tyco case, and Enron was just starting to show up on the radar.

Service-oriented architectures were beginning to take shape, and both memory and storage were quite expensive. Software as a service (not merely hosted applications) was at its very early stages. The cloud existed only outside.

A lot of things have change since then, but our criteria for inclusion on the list haven’t changed a whit. Although the composition of our judging panel includes some different names from the 2003 edition, it still consists of editorial colleagues, analysts, system integrators, users and vendors themselves. Like usual, they request anonymity so they are protected from any negative feedback.

We’ve selected some 130 different products upon which we all agree—more than we have in previous editions because the landscape is far more challenging than it has been in the past. They represent what we believe are the solutions that best exemplify the spirit of innovation demanded by the current economy, while providing their customers with the unique tools and capabilities to move and grow beyond the recession.

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? The answer is a resounding no. They do represent the ones best suited to meet the needs of KMWorld readers. They all have been designed with a clear understanding of customers’ needs.

I hope you’ll spend the time required to explore what the products can do to solve at least some of the vexing problems we all face today.

5280 Solutions: Dynamic Filer—automates the process of scanning and filing paper documents into SharePoint.

A2iA: A2iA DocumentReader—classification of digitized documents into categories (letter, identity papers, contract, etc.) based on both their geometry and their content. Click here to see enhanced product description.

ABBYY USA: TouchTo Technology—data capture software for LCD-based touchscreen technology.

Abrevity: Abrevity’s FileData Classifier—enables control over files and data distributed across heterogeneous storage platforms.

Access Innovations: Search Harmony—ultra-scalable search solution. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Accusoft Pegasus: Web-Based Image Viewer—document and photo processing for asset optimization.

Adobe: LiveCycle Developer Express—Adobe’s first step toward cloud computing and embracing open source in the enterprise.

Alterian: Content Manager—full Web content management designed for business-user level Web site optimization.

Appian: Enterprise—simple, robust business process management. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Apple: iPhone 3GS apps—bringing true enterprise capabilities to arguably the most user-friendly smart phone.

Aquire: OrgPublisher 9 Premier—succession planning, organizational planning and powerful organization charting.

ASG Software: ASG-ViewDirect Suite—a highly scalable, full-featured archiving platform.

AskMe-Realcom: AskMe for SharePoint—a legitimate knowledge networking solution.

Astute Solutions: RealDialog—natural language-based search, knowledge management and Web self-service solutions.

Attensity: Voice of the Customer—suite of business applications for unstructured data, offering  integrated automated response for customer experience management.

Attivio: Attivio Active Intelligence Engine—extends enterprise search capabilities across documents, data and media.

Autonomy: Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) Server—collects indexed data from connectors and stores it in its proprietary structure, optimized for fast processing and retrieval.

BA-Insight: Longitude—extends the search usability, relevance and connectivity capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint and Search Server.

Baynote: Collective Intelligence Platform—on-demand recommendations and social search for Web sites.

Brainware: Globalbrain Enterprise Edition—locates information on PCs, enterprise databases, file servers, the Internet, etc., supports more than 250 file formats. Click here to see enhanced product description.

CA: CA Governance, Risk & Compliance Manager—centralized, unified approach to managing all IT risks and controls.

CaseCentral: CaseCentral Early Case Assessment—integrated, multipurpose e-discovery review platform.

Chiliad: Chiliad Discovery/Alert—platform for search and knowledge discovery across distributed repositories of unstructured and structured data.

Citrix Online: GoToMeeting—richly featured, stable Web presentation/conferencing solution.

Comperio: Comperio Front—business logic software search solutions.

Concept Searching: conceptClassifier for SharePoint—statistical search and classification using concept extraction and compound term processing. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Connectbeam: Social Activity Platform and Applications—enterprise social networking platform.

Connotate: Agent Community GEN2—allows non-technical users to create powerful, customized intelligent agents to access high-value content deep on the Web or in the enterprise. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Consona: Consona Knowledge Management—knowledge-driven customer relationship management.

Content Analyst: Content Analyst Analytical Technology (CAAT)—enables organizations to organize, access and share information across multiple languages without the need for extensive human intervention. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Coveo: Coveo Enterprise Search—offers a customizable, complete and unified view of critical information located across the organization no matter where it sits. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Daticon-eed: Daticon EED Discovery Partner—integrated platform for e-discovery processing, analytics, review and production.

Day Software: Day CQ5 V. 5.2—Web content management designed for business users to easily create and publish content.

DeepDyve: Research Engine—search and indexing technology to cull rich, relevant content from journals, documents and untapped Deep Web pages.

DocZone: DocZone, Really Strategies' SaaS XML content management and single-source publishing solution for authoring, managing, reusing, localizing and publishing content.

Dow Jones Business & Relationship Intelligence: Dow Jones Companies & Executives—business and competitive intelligence, including competitor analysis, financial statements, regulatory filings, targeted news, executive biographies.

EDS: EDS Applications Modernization Services—agile applications and architecture to speed software migration. Click here to see enhanced product description.

eGain: eGain Service 8.0—complete suite of customer service and contact center software.

EMC: SourceOne Suite—new family of products and solutions for archiving, e-discovery and compliance aimed at helping companies centrally manage multiple content types in order to apply consistent retention, disposition and overall life cycle management.

Empolis: Empolis Discovery and Research/Attensity Discovery and Research—a comprehensive family of information management applications built on deep expertise in semantic language technologies. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Endeca: Information Access Platform—foundation upon which configurable search-based business applications can be built and deployed.

Exalead: Exalead CloudView—automatically collects, structures and contextualizes high volumes of unstructured and structured content scattered across the enterprise information cloud.

EXSYS: Exsys Corvid—knowledge automation expert system development tool. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Extensis: Universal Type Server 2—comprehensive font management and workflow.

FatWire: Web Experience Management (WEM) Suite—Web content management, collaboration and community, content integration, audience targeting and measurement, and mobile publishing and delivery.

Fios: Discovery Response Services—identification, preservation and collection through processing, review and production.

FTI Technology: Ringtail Legal—services designed to reduce enterprise risk while improving the daily flow and management of critical information.

Global 360: Process360—complete business process management.

Google: Google Docs and Spreadsheets—merges word processing, spreadsheets and basic presentations within an online service that allows collaboration with other users.

Guidance Software: EnCase Enterprise—searches, preserves and analyzes data across servers, desktops, and laptops to investigate HR matters, suspected fraud and external threats, as well as the platform for eDiscovery and CyberSecurity solutions.

Hoovers: Competitive Intelligence Services—online application service that allows clients to monitor coverage of companies, people, products and issues from a wide range of news and information sources.

IBM: Agile ECM—an ECM platform integrated with business process management, designed to deliver the flexibility required to increase business adaptability.

iConect: iCONECTnXT—review features, analysis and production tools, key integrations with e-discovery collections, processing and culling.

iDatix: iSynergy—integrated content management designed to enable organizations to innovate their approach to managing content and simplify their daily workflow.

Infoglide: Identity Resolution Engine—enables capturing/leveraging ambiguous identity information to discover hidden relationships with multiple degrees of separation and automate decisions based on results.

InfoNgen: InfoNgen Enterprise Discovery—automatically monitors more than 28,000 online sources and processes more than 600,000 stories per day.

Information Builders: Enterprise Information Management (EIM) suite—real-time management of any structured or unstructured information from anywhere across the entire enterprise.

Inmagic: Presto—a complete social knowledge management platform. Click here to see enhanced product description.

InQuira: InQuira Intelligent Search—a unified system that combines advanced semantic search techniques and contextual understanding.

Integrify: Integrify 5.0—on-premise or on-demand enterprise request management software combining business process management and workflow. Click here to see enhanced product description.

IntelliResponse: Instant Answer e-service suite—enhances consumer experience across a variety of critical customer touch points, including the Web, chat, e-mail and phone.

Intellivision: Intelligent Video—video analysis and full automation of video monitoring.

iQuest: iQuest Software Suite—integrated software suite that combines social network analysis, auto-categorization with text extraction technologies to analyze unstructured data.

ISYS Search: ISYS:web 9—enterprise search solution for intranets, Web sites, Microsoft SharePoint and custom Web applications.

Jive Software: Jive Social Business Software (SBS)—collaboration, community and social network software in a secure enterprise platform.

Jodange: Jodange Opinion Utility for Publishers—an application for publishers that presents online opinions from a wide variety of selected sources to publishers about opinions expressed by those who are influencing their customers, competitors and the marketplace.

Just Systems: xfy XBRL Report—multidimensional instance viewer and report composer allowing extraction of financial data from multiple XBRL documents.

Kapow Technology: Web Data Server—enterprise platform that can wrap any existing Web site or Web application into data feeds or programmatic interfaces with no coding.

Kazeon: Information Server Data Center Edition—integrates discovery, indexing, classification, search, reporting and action into a single product.

Knowledge Genes: Knowledge Genes Enterprise Space—a method for developing and utilizing components of knowledge on a specific subject to enhance the organization.

Lombardi: Teamworks 7—enhances the automation and control of critical processes through support for large-scale business process transformation programs.

Lucid Imagination: LucidWorks—robust, open source search solutions.

Metastorm: Metastorm Enterprise—software suite designed to effectively align business strategy with execution while optimizing the types and levels of business resources.

Microsoft: MOSS—platform for collaboratively creating, managing and sharing documents and Web services.

Mindbreeze: Mindbreeze Search Appliance—easily deployed enterprise search. Click here to see enhanced product description.

NetDocuments: NetBinders—a secure mechanism to share and collaborate on documents.

New Idea Engineering: XPump—a content extraction toolkit.

NewsGator: Social Sites Professional—secure RSS feeds from news sites, blogs, Wikis and enterprise applications where your employees want them—the Web, mobile devices, e-mail clients and desktops.

NextLabs: Compliant Enterprise—entitlement management system to control and audit collaboration and access of applications and data to meet security and compliance requirements.

NextPage: NextPage Information Tracking Platform—tracking unstructured and unmanaged documents through the entire organization and enforcing document retention policies on those documents.

nGenera: nGen Enterprise Collaboration—designed to create a collaborative operating model, new strategic ideation process to help facilitate innovation.

Noetix: Noetix Search—a browser-based search application that enables users to quickly find the right Noetix views for their reports. Click here to see enhanced product description.

North Plains: TeleScope—highly scalable digital asset management solution for rich media management and distribution, centralization, workflow optimization and virtual collaboration.

Northern Light: SinglePoint Strategic Research Portal—hosted strategic research portal that can be deployed in 90 days to an unlimited number. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Nstein: DAM 4.0—.Net digital asset management application runs atop several software layers.

Onix Networking: IT Solutions and Services—information access and analysis, IT resource management/security and network solutions for a broad range of corporate and government customers.

Ontrack Engenium: Semetric—concept-based search engine designed to be embedded in a variety of applications to generate better, faster results.

Open Text: Open Text ECM Suite - Collaboration & Community Management—provides virtual environments in which employees and, at times, external business partners share knowledge on projects and collaborate.

Optimus BT: Resolve 2.0—framework leveraging SharePoint for secure, centralized automation of managing, tracking and resolution of issues.

PaperThin: CommonSpot 5.1—an inherently easy-to-use, intuitive Web content management system. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Perfect Search: Perfect Search Appliance—enables rapid search of Oracle, Microsoft SQL, DB2, MySQL and any SQL-compliant database without placing any additional load on those systems. Click here to see enhanced product description.

PTC (Parametric Technology Corp.): Arbortext Product Information Delivery—a complete product information delivery system that automates the authoring and publishing processes.

QL2: Data as a Service (DaaS)—solutions for customers in the travel, retail, life sciences, information services and government markets through secure, timely, focused delivery of Web data. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Raytion: Information Management Consulting—enterprise search, categorization and classification offering, including taxonomy management and metadata management.

Recommind: Axcelerate eDiscovery—automatic categorization of documents into computer-generated “buckets” based not just on keyword frequency but also on conceptual meaning.

Responsys: Interact Campaign—interactive marketing campaigns.

Rivet Logic: Open Source Content Management/Consulting—Enterprise 2.0 collaborative community solutions. Click here to see enhanced product description.

SafeHarbor: SmartSupport—a hosted, managed Web self-service delivery platform.

SAVO Group: Sales Enablement—organizationwide, on-demand, collaborative sales assistance and support.

SchemaLogic: SchemaServer—object modeling, collaboration and governance engine that supports simple list structures, complex multifaceted taxonomies or ontologies, and enterprisewide metadata structures.

SDL Tridion: SDL Tridion 2009—a unified online marketing suite, combining WCM functionality and online marketing capabilities. Click here to see enhanced product description.

SDL XySoft (formerly XyEnterprise): LiveContent—XML component content management (CCM) and dynamic publishing solutions.

Search Technologies: Enterprise Search Solutions—recommendation, installation, integration and maintenance of enterprise search platforms.

Semantra: Semantra RapidROI—ad hoc reporting and analytical solution for non-technical users.

Sitecore: Online Marketing Suite—online and offline campaigns and marketing channels to drive traffic to Web sites.

SLI: Learning Search—hosted site search solution that learns from site visitors.

Socialtext: Enterprise 2.0 by Socialtext—pioneering enterprise social networking platform.

Software AG: webMethods 8—integration of SOA, B2B and BPM capabilities into a single, unified console.

SpringCM: SpringCM On-Demand Platform—Capture, document management, workflow, collaboration, delivery, records management, reporting and administration.

StoredIQ: Intelligent Information Management—automation of the full e-discovery life cycle.

Sumtotal Systems: ResultsOnDemand—automated and integrated learning, performance and compensation solutions for talent development.

Sybase: Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 15—complete business intelligence and database management.

Symantec: Symantec Online Backup—reliable, secure and cost-effective data backup and recovery.

TCDI: Discovery WorkFlow—centralized workflow definition and control interface capable of automating the launch of processes and resources. Click here to see enhanced product description.

TEMIS: Luxid—knowledge extraction from unstructured data. Click here to see enhanced product description.

Teragram: Teragram Categorizer—enables classification and organization of documents and information in an intuitive, browsable hierarchical directory for smart search and retrieval.

TheBrain: PersonalBrain 5—mind mapping software that allows you to link ideas, files and Web pages in a visual interface.

Thunderstone: Thunderstone Search Appliance—combines full-text and structured data without programming.

TIBCO subsidiary Insightful:S-Plus 8 Enterprise Server—predictive analysis integration to business intelligence, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning and other corporate applications.

Top Quadrant: TopBraid Suite—semantic technology to connect silos of data, systems and infrastructure and build flexible applications from linked data models.

Traction Software: TeamPage—collaborative hypertext platform built to support working communication within and between groups.

Vital Path: PathBuilder—content integration and migration software.

Vivisimo: Velocity Search Platform—robust search for enterprise and government.

Wordmap: Wordmap Search Integration Framework—a complete taxonomy management system.

X1: Enterprise Search Suite 6.0—integrates critical business systems and bridges the gap between the desktop and the enterprise.

Xerox: DocuShare—widely deployed Web-based software application delivering content management capabilities.

Xythos: Xythos Enterprise Document Management Suite—document management solutions that feature collaboration with all the components that distributed organizations need to manage and share content on the Web.

ZL Technologies: ZL Unified Archive—an integrated suite of applications that deliver archiving, e-discovery search and litigation support, retention management, compliance supervision and storage optimization in a single scalable solution.

ZyLAB: ZyIMAGE eDiscovery and Production Platform—an end-to-end e-discovery software platform that addresses all the key aspects of e-discovery from records management to publishing discovery data into document management software. Click here to see enhanced product description.