September 2008, Trend-Setting Products 2008 [Vol 17, Issue 8]

Features

Enterprise social Software technology

While agreement around the core concepts of "social software" has remained elusive, the underlying phenomenon is quite real. To date, industry analysts have quite properly focused on the cultural and organizational aspects of social software technologies (blogs, wikis, tag clouds and such) in the enterprise. "The sociology is more important than the technology," you often hear, and I couldn't agree more.

Government agencies build stronger foundations for sharing information

The benefits of better information sharing among departments within government agencies have long been self-evident, but difficult to achieve. Yet, significant steps are being taken to improve such sharing. Also, collaboration with entities outside the government is becoming more feasible as easier-to-use collaboration platforms emerge.

BI, in good times and bad

Business intelligence (BI) seems to thrive in tough economic times almost as well it does in good times. Based on a survey of IT and business leaders in Europe, China and the United States, AMR Research predicts that the global market for BI will be $57.1 billion in 2008, with the U.S. market accounting for $25.5 billion of the total. The growth rate is expected to be somewhat slower than in the past at about 5 percent, but increasing over the next several years.

Hardware manufacturers find green in “going green”

U.S. hardware manufacturers have taken significant steps to improve their environmental standing. Those steps are not only playing well with consumers, but also are providing moneymaking opportunities for the vendors through cost reduction and new revenue streams.

KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2008

What makes a trend-setting product?
When we first started identifying products six years ago, we were still seeing some radical new technology and tried to select solutions that would be embraced by the marketplace and gain wide adoption.
A few of the companies that developed the products have gone belly up; more have been acquired by other vendors. However, all things considered, we've been quite accurate selecting products that deliver customer value, which is the underlying principle that defines this year's list.

Business Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence: Access Innovations

Business Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence: Connotate

Trend-Setting Products of 2008
A2iA, ABBYY, Access Innovations, ArborSys Group

Trend-Setting Products of 2008:
Astute Solutions, Attivio, Brainware, CaseCentral

Trend-Setting Products of 2008:
Clearview, Collexis, Connectbeam, Content Analyst

Trend-Setting Products of 2008:
Copyright Clearance Center, Exsys,
Hewlett-Packard, IBM

Trend-Setting Products of 2008:
ISYS, KANA, Mindbreeze, Noetix

Trend-Setting Products of 2008:
Northern Light, Open Text, PaperThin, QL2

Trend-Setting Products of 2008:
SAVO, Sinequa, SpringCM, Teragram

Trend-Setting Products of 2008:
Wordmap, Xerox, ZyLAB,

News Analysis

The summer of transparency

Google has been and remains a secretive company. Part of the firm's reluctance to engage in orgies of public relations is common sense. Mountain View, Calif., is open but also closed.

Everything is fragmented— Blog storming in six stages

Waiting for the e-book

My Kindle from Amazon is fun. It's usable. And when I use it in a public place, it makes me a geek magnet, the way a puppy attracts smiles and small talk. But the Kindle is a big, big step away from showing us what real e-books will do for us....

The Future of the Future

The Future of the The Future: Turning problems into opportunities