A year ago, we introduced our first list of trend-setting products. We thought then that by sorting them into categories-business process management, collaboration, content management, document management, portals and smart enterprise suites-we'd bring some order into already muddled waters. If it was tough 12 months ago, with the consolidation juggernaut still running at nearly full speed and the blurring of distinct offerings, it was even harderthis time around. So we made a conscious decision to not break the products into specific categories. As KMWorld continues to emphasize, knowledge management is not a specific application, rather an attitude, an approach to delivering solutions to an organization, its workers and its customers.

Through conversations with editorial colleagues, a host of analysts and users-running the gamut from C-level executives to entry-level knowledge workers-we have listed 56 companies. More than 200 vendors-whose combined product lineup includes more than 1,000 separate offerings-were considered. (As you'll see in our Fall 2004 Buyers' Guide, we list about 1,600 companies that provide, in the broadest sense, KM products or services.)

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 Trends 2004. But like last year, we all agreed that usability, flexibility, adoption rate and total cost of ownership should be consider. And we also identified some vendors for their vision toward the future or for a collection of offerings, rather than a specific product or compelling new version of an existing one.

One thing is certain, though, our informal committee agreed that each company/product listed holds the promise for the marketplace, even if the marketplace has yet to realize it.

Alphablox (alphablox.com, recently acquired by IBM) Analytics 5.5-a business process management platform for custom analytic applications, incorporating new capabilities for data presentation, visualization and analysis.

Anacubis (anacubis.com) Desktop 2.0-visual research and analysis software that enables discovery and extraction of intelligence from multiple information sources.

Antarctica Systems (antarctica.net) and ePlus (eplus.com)-collaboration on a series of software products designed to give corporations increased visibility into their procurement costs to identify opportunities to reduce expenses.

Arbortext (arbortext.com) Enterprise Publishing Software Suite 5.0-a centralized repository with content that can be reused, repurposed and updated, allowing organizations to publish content simultaneously in multiple languages, in multiple hard- and soft-copy formats and to multiple audiences internally and externally on demand.

ATG (atg.com) Adaptive Customer Assistance-a Web self-service offering that combines natural language search, an answer repository and personalization capabilities that give users a direct answer to their direct question.

Attensity (attensity.com) Relational Extraction Server 3.0-addresses nuances, relationships and context of everyday language, finding relationships between entities; able to extract those event relationships and then send them into a database; strong set of heuristics describing the English language.

Autonomy (autonomy.com) Directed Navigation-integrates with Autonomy's core Intelligent Data Operating Layer to deliver accurate results by guiding users through the navigation process to provide advanced, real-time information discovery.

Captiva (captivasoftware.com) InputAccel Express-new export modules to transfer electronic documents into enterprise applications provided by IBM, Microsoft, Interwoven and SAP, as well as increased functionality for existing exports such as Documentum 5.2 and eiStream 6.0.

Convera (convera.com) Screening Room-an optional component to the RetrievalWare enterprise search platform that also searches text and audio data, real-time capture, encoding, analysis and cataloging of video, in addition to closed-caption text, text generated by speech-to-text converters and other metadata over corporate intranets/extranets.

Documentum (documentum.com) Business Process Management suite-integrates the collaboration capabilities of eRoom with content management and process control through the Documentum process engine.

EMC (emc.com) Documentum Content Storage Services-enables organizations to define and execute storage policies that automate the placement and movement of content across a tiered heterogeneous storage infrastructure.

Endeca (endeca.com) Navigation Engine-a directed search engine with deep underlying analytics; more than simple keyword search, a unique approach to information discovery.

Entopia (entopia.com) K-Bus-infrastructure software designed to automatically and dynamically discover and deliver relevant content and experts into the day-to-day business process.

Entrieva (entrieva.com)-suite of categorization, discovery and notification software technology engines to power commercial and government KM initiatives; real-time notification via phone (cell phone or wired line), PDA, e-mail, etc. (using interactive voice and multimodal technologies).

ePeople (epeople.com) Teamwork 5.1-integrates with Outlook, allowing users to access relevant information, find help from experts, capture knowledge and work collaboratively with customers and partners.

Exact Software (exactsoftware.com) e-Synergy-browser-based business solutions for the enterprise enabling information discovery and delivery.

Facttva (factiva.com) iWorker Search Technology-an algorithm-based system that matches keyword searches to the filtering capability embedded within Factiva's proprietary taxonomy, which consists of company, region, industry, language and subject codes that are universally applied to Factiva's entire content set.

FAST Search and Retrieval (fastsearch.com) Enterprise Search Platform-turns collections of internal and external structured and unstructured content into a unified and fully accessible resource unaffected by data format, structure, location or parent application.

FileNet (filenet.com) Team Collaboration Manager-a Web-based, out-of-the-box solution that delivers team collaboration integrated with content management and fully functional business process management (BPM) capabilities.

Genuosity OrderGenerator (ordergenerator-comy-software that provides small businesses with an automated toolset that rewards customers when they refer new business.

Google (google.com) Enterprise Search Appliance-an integrated hardware/software search product that enables corporations, universities and government agencies to deliver search results on their intranets and public Web sites.

Hummingbird (hummingbird.com) Enterprise-portal, collaboration and content management technologies in an integrated suite, as well as e-mail management, expertise location and management, business intelligence and analytics business process management.

Hyperwave (hyperwave.com) ECM Server Platform IS/6-form-based publishing, workflow and a uniform platform for all applications.

Immediatech (immediatech.com) GoFileRoom Proavailable for accountants and CPA firms, can be implemented online for smaller firms.

Infodata (infodata.com) Content Management Services Layer-offering enterprise and government customers the functionality to streamline regulatory compliance mandates, better manipulate electronic documents and facilitate the protection of electronic content as it leaves the network environment.

Intelliseek (intelliseek.com) BlogPulse-free online search and tracking tool that measures and ranks opinions and "buzz" about key issues, people, phrases and links that occur daily in more than a million Internet blogs.

Interwoven (interwoven.com) OpenDeploy 6-a code and content deployment product within its integrated ECM platform and Web change management solution; facilitates deploying and provisioning Web-based applications and accelerates IT governance initiatives.

Inxight (inxight.com) SmartDiscovery suite-advanced unstructured text mining and analytical processing; document summarization, categorization and visualization in a single offering; essentially summarizes information, categorizes it, extracts entities and visualizes that information; Web-capable and Web services-enabled.

ISYS' (isysusa.com) ISYS:desktop-searches more than 125 data formats, including all MS Office products, e-mail, attachments, PDF, HTML, ZIP files, databases and native format spreadsheets; supports a range of simple search methods.

JPMorgan Chase Bank (jpmorgan.com) i-VAULT!-High-volume image archive service; secure image warehouse with redundant archive sites in the Northeast and Southwest, offering instant access through a Web interface.

KnowledgeBase Solutions' (knowledgebase.net) KnowledgeBase.net V 4.0-combining document and knowledge management with search technology and customizable portals.

Kofax (kofax.com)-acquisition of Mohomine enables embedding the already multilingual Ascent Capture engine with categorization capabilities; Mohomine takes a pre-existing taxonomy and can be trained with a relatively small set of documents.

Mindfabric (mindfabric.com) Enterprise 4.1-new platform support, enhanced business rules, improved knowledge management tools and new test tools, offering lower total cost of ownership and additional opportunities to generate revenue.

MuseGlobal (museglobal.com) MuseSearch-a federated search tool that provides a single interface for users to enter a search query and retrieve an integrated set of results from many different sources.

Onfolio (onfolio.com)-a personal KM tool that integrates completely with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Office applications, designed to allow users to easily collect, organize and share information they find searching the Internet.

Open Text's (opentext.com) acquisition integration-a complete content management solution through its acquisitions of Magellan, Gauss and IXOS integrated with LiveLink, giving customers a single platform to manage corporate Web sites, intranets and extranets.

PiXlogic (pixlogic.com)-a tool that doesn't require textual metadata associated with an image to find a specific image in a collection of documents; a pixel-level search for shapes and angles.

Primus (primus.com) Control-F1 integration-combining support automation and knowledge management software to provide agents and users with accurate answers to computer problems, automate the resolution process and complete the repair cycle.

Recommind (recommind.com) MindServer 3.0-pre-built connectors for integration with a variety of portals, document and content management systems, databases and other text sources.

RedDot (reddot.com) XCMS 6.0-a single, scalable solution designed for mid-market organizations. The company has also released RedDot CMS 6.0, a core component of XCMS.

SAS (sas.com) SAS9-a new platform that connects all SAS applications and communicates with other data sources and programs, which includes the SAS Intelligence Platform, a set of integrated software for data integration, business reporting and analytics, as well as enhanced integration optimization and predictive analytics capabilities.

Serena/Merant (serena.com) Collage 4.5-a quickly deployable Web content management solution that features automatic workflow generation, incremental content deployment and broader support for Web services and industry platforms such as Windows Server 2003 and the AIX operating system.

ServiceWare (serviceware.com) Enterprise 5.5-includes Unicode support, a new user interface for ServiceWare Self-Services, the addition of ServiceWare Agent (a new product designed for customer service representatives), ServiceWare Professional, ServiceWare Architect and ServiceWare Administrator.

Sitescape (sitescape.com) Forum 7.1-enterprise collaboration software designed for greater scalability, enhanced document management capabilities and a richer graphical user interface.

Smead Software Solutions (smeadsoftware.com) Smeadlink Express-bringing integrated records management and document management to small to medium-sized businesses; a complete package to manage the document life cycle according to best business practices.

Spotfire (spotfire.com)-focused visualization tools to finely control and analyze what users see; ability to granularly dial up and down each item of what information displays on the screen.

Stratify (stratify.com)-good approach to dynamic generation of taxonomies, which can then be managed by a few people, rather than numbers of librarians and science people dealing with taxonomies, development and further iterations.

SupportSoft (supportsoft.com) Real-Time Service Management-four new products in the portfolio: Auto Discovery and Metering, Knowledge Center Suite, LiveAssist and VoiceAssist.

Tacit (tacit.com) ActiveNet-combines automated expertise sharing and relationship networking in a single solution, allowing users who choose to participate in valuable collaboration with legitimate privacy.

TOWER Software (towersoft.com) TRIM Context-keeps all records and documents related to a subject in one place, enabling users to resolve queries and make decisions.

Traction Software (tractionsoftware.com) TeamPage and Communicator V 3.1-robust enterprise blogging software that encompasses collaboration, document management and KM.

TripleHop (triplehop.com) MatchPoint 3.0-enterprise contextual search software combining statistical and semantic analysis and including user profile and existing enterprise knowledge.

Verity (verity.com) K2E 5.5-search, classification and recommendation software that includes five new capabilities said to enable intellectual capital management (ICM) system administrators to better monitor and manage their systems and users to locate or uncover information with greater ease, speed and accuracy, including advance query analytics.

Vignette (vignette.com)-enterprise suite with six modular application services: content, portal, collaboration, process, integration and analysis.

YourAmigo (youramigo.com) Enterprise Search 2.1.5-near real-time indexing of all major document types; search engine index is updated when any document is added, modified, removed or when data changes in a Web-enabled database.

anacubis: anacubis Desktop 2.0

anacubis

The Visual Space

Capital Park

Fulbourn

Cambridge

CB1 5XH UK

Phone: +44 (0) 1223 703995

Fax: +44 (0) 1223 728601

E-mail: sales@anacubis.com

anacubis is changing the way people work with information, providing solutions to corporate researchers, analysts and information professionals that support the rapid discovery of business intelligence within large amounts of structured or semi-structured information.

Through its intuitive visual interface, the anacubis Desktop software product enables the rapid visual discovery and analysis of intelligence from both online and enterprise information sources.

Users of the anacubis Desktop can quickly retrieve, consolidate and analyze information from business information vendors, websites, databases and spreadsheets-and then distribute visual representations of their research and analysis in the form of easy-to navigate charts, supporting effective decision making.

ATG: ATG Adaptive Customer Assistance

Art Technology Group, Inc.

25 First Street

Cambridge, MA 02141

Phone: +1.617.386.1000

Fax: +1.617.386.1111

E-mail: atgsales@atg.com

Web: www.atg.com

The world's largest and most prestigious companies use ATG solutions to drive their online marketing, sales, and service. With ATG powering your online business, you have the most intelligent and adaptable tools available to create a relevant and consistent customer experience across multiple touch-points, throughout the customer lifecycle.

An unprecedented self-service solution, ATG Adaptive Customer Assistance helps your customers help themselves online, by giving them highly personalized answers to their questions and even guiding them toward completing their own transactions-without picking up a telephone. Combining a state-of-the-art answer repository with intuitive, multi-lingual natural language search and navigation capabilities, this solution also includes comprehensive business reporting that helps you understand customer preferences to continually improve your online self-service.

Convera: RetrievalWare Screening Room 3.0

CONVERA

1921 Gallows Road

Suite 200

Vienna, VA 22182

Phone: 800.788.7758

Fax: 703.761.1990

E-mail: info@convera.com

Web: www.convera.com

Convera's RetrievalWare Screening Room 3.0 module is a highly scalable solution that enables organizations to locate and re-use the knowledge locked up in their video assets. Users benefit from real-time capture, encoding, analysis and cataloguing of video, closed-caption text and other metadata over corporate intranets/extranets.

Screening Room 3.0 enables the management and re-purposing of rich media assets and is fully integrated with Convera's RetrievalWare 8 search and categorization solution. This powerful combination allows analysts, archivists and all users to search vast multimedia repositories at lightning speed to isolate key footage without having to sift through endless hours of video.

For more information, go to www.convera.com/sr.

Endeca: Search and Guided Navigation

Endeca

55 Cambridge Parkway

Cambridge, MA 02142

Phone: 617.577.7999

Fax: 617.577.7766

E-mail: info@endeca.com

Web: www.endeca.com

Endeca offers next-generation search and Guided Navigation(SM) solutions that address the information overload problems associated with content, catalog and enterprise information access and retrieval. Endeca technology is already at work for leading government organizations, retailers, manufacturers, financial services companies, and information publishers like the Library of Congress, IBM, CompUSA, Barnes & Noble, Putnam Investments, and Arrow Electronics. Endeca empowers users to explore and discover relevant relationships in data and find accurate and precise results with unprecedented speed. This technology can be applied across a wide-range of enterprise and customer applications including Knowledge Management, customer self-service, catalogs, directories, and portal integration.

Entrieva, Inc.

Entrieva, Inc.

2100 Reston Parkway

Suite 204

Reston, Virginia 20191

Phone: 703.207.0040

Web: www.entrieva.com

Advanced Text Analytics-More Meaningful Business Intelligence for Improved Performance

Entrieva provides enterprise software to solve business problems, get insights, and improve your company's overall performance. Our suite of tools can clearly show you how to:

* Increase Revenue-by providing targeted categorization of search terms in the commercial pay for position market.

* Improve Productivity-by making search context sensitive and more effective. Find quickly, search less.

* Gain New Insights-by mining terabytes of text and figuring out non-obvious relationships.

* Gain Competitive Advantage-by shortening product development cycles and getting smarter competitive and market intelligence.

* Leverage Current Investments-by using our open APIs to create the perfect solution for your business problem.

Entrieva's signature Advanced Text Analytics platform-SemioTagger and SemioDiscovery-include powerful visualization, categorization, entity extraction, thematic role extraction, and federated enterprise search to provide complete solution for your unstructured data analytics needs.

FAST Search & Transfer, Inc.: FAST ESP(TM)

FAST Search & Transfer, Inc.

Cutler Lake Corporate Group

117 Kendrick Street, Suite 100

Needham, MA 02492

Toll Free: 888.871.3839

Phone: 781.304.2400

Fax: 781.304.2410

E-mail: sales@fastsearch.com

Web: www.fastsearch.com

FAST Search & Transfer, Inc. (FAST(TM)) creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at the world's best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST's flexible and scalable integrated technology platform elevates the search capabilities of enterprise customers and connects people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium. This drives revenues and reduces total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure. FAST's powerful enterprise search technology solutions are used by a wide range of global customers and partners, including AT&T, Cardinal Health, CareerBuilder.com, CIGNA, CNET, Dell, Fidelity Investments, FirstGov.gov (GSA), IBM, and LexisNexis.

Hummingbird Enterprise(TM)

Hummingbird Ltd.

1 Sparks Avenue

Toronto, ON M2H 2W1 Canada

Toll Free: 877.FLY.HUMM

Phone: 416.496.2200

Fax: 416.496.2207

E-mail: sales@hummingbird.com

Web: www.hummingbird.com

Hummingbird Enterprise is an integrated enterprise content management platform that enables organizations to unlock the value of business content and provides the foundation for building process-centric enterprise content management solutions. Featuring a common repository and a shared set of technologies common to all components, Hummingbird Enterprise enables organizations to manage the entire lifecycle of business content from creation to disposition. Hummingbird Enterprise features content management capabilities for:

Document Management, E-mail Management, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Workflow, Collaboration, Instant Messaging, Mobility, Query & Reporting, Data Integration, Portal Framework

JPMorgan Chase Bank: i-VAULT!(SM)

JPMorgan Chase Bank

2 Chase Manhattan Plaza, 14th floor

New York NY 10081

Phone: 866.2 i VAULT (248.2858)

Fax: 212.383.0722

Contact: Jeff Schor

E-mail: Jeff.schor@jpmorgan.com

Web: www.jpmorgan.com/ivault

i-VAULT! is JPMorgan's Internet-based enterprise content management service that offers organizations the opportunity to outsource document storage and avoid the significant expense of building an in-house archive. Designed for optimal efficiency, i-VAULT! stores high-quality images in a computerized warehouse and provides secure Internet access to critical business information...anytime, anywhere, i-VAULT!'s fully-redundant architecture also ensures business continuity. This advanced solution brings together JPMorgan's in-depth industry expertise and leading-edge technology to offer customers a highly-secure and cost-effective method of archiving critical information with virtually unlimited storage capacity.

MuseGlobal, Inc.: MuseSearch

MuseGlobal, Inc.

4001 South 700 East

Suite 220

Salt Lake City, UT 84108 USA

Phone: +1 801.208.1880

Fax: +1 801.208.1889

Web: www.museglobal.com

Metasearch technology from MuseGlobal lets you give your customers a single point of access to unlimited numbers and types of content sources. MuseSearch weaves the combined searching power of subscription databases, native search systems and web search engines and seamlessly integrates results within your branded interface. Its powerful translation, conversion and reformatting capabilities preserve the quality of the native search system functionality and content. MuseSearch's advanced processing capabilities ensure information delivered to end-users is information they can use.

Backed by 125 combined years of R&D, MuseSearch is implemented by more companies than any other metasearch provider and installed in over one-thousand end-user organizations, representing many languages. MuseGlobal operates exclusively through technology and distribution partnerships. Add MuseSearch to your solution today.

RedDot Solutions: Red Dot XCMS(TM)

RedDot Solutions

One Battery Park Plaza

24th Floor

New York, NY 10004

Toll-free: 1.866.REDDOTS

Phone: 1.212.425.3988

Fax: 1.212.425.3987

E-mail: info@reddot.com

Web: www.reddot.com

RedDot's Extended Content Management System (XCMS)(TM) helps you manage all of your information in a central and secure way. XCMS lets you introduce web content and document management, online collaboration and business process automation in a secure way that adds new value to your business. RedDot XCMS supports your organization as it changes, offering a set of modules that provides a new level of control over your information. You select only the modules you need, and add others as your business evolves. With RedDot XCMS, you manage your content and are not ruled by it.

SERENA Software, Inc.: Serena Collage

SERENA Software, Inc.

2755 Campus Drive, 3rd Floor

San Mateo, California 94403 USA

Toll Free: 800.547.7827

Fax: 503.629.0186

Web: www.serena.com/products/collage

Serena Collage is an award-winning Web content management system used by organizations throughout the world to manage change to critical web content. Collage is based on the premise that every organization already has critical web sites in place. These sites shouldn't have to re-created to get value from a content management system. Collage rapidly imports existing Web site content and provides scaleable control within hours of implementation, all at a fraction of the cost of comparable solutions. Collage provides intuitive user interfaces that are tailored for different user types, making it easy for anyone to make changes to Web content.

ServiceWare: ServiceWare Enterprise(TM)

ServiceWare Technologies, Inc.

12 Federal Street

Suite 503

Pittsburgh, PA 15212

Phone: 412.222.4450

Web: www.serviceware.com

Service Ware Enterprise enables organizations to capture their most critical asset-knowledge-reducing service and support costs. Powered by the Cognitive Processor, a patented, adaptive search technology that learns, ServiceWare Enterprise features:

* Self-Organizing Knowledge

* Self-Service

* Multi-Channel Collaboration

* Expertise Location

* Links and Notices

* Forums

* CRM Integration

Service Ware's superior technology is enhanced by 13 years of experience and a proven methodology for implementation and ROI analysis.

Realize the benefits of reduced handle times, faster training time, fewer escalations and improved customer satisfaction.

Smead Software: Smeadlink Express

Smead Software

600 Smead Blvd.

Hastings, MN 55033

Toll Free: 1.800.865.5147

Web: www.smeadsoftware.com

Smeadlink Express Integrated Document Management Software combines the advantages of electronic document management with the ability to manage paper documents in one application. High speed imaging, ERM, PC document management and workflow are seamlessly integrated for instant and simultaneous access to documents by multiple users. Electronic documents of various types are accessible through a common viewer. Bar code tracking and color coded labeling capabilities bring hard copy documents into the mix for a total document management solution. Smeadlink Express is an excellent and affordable solution for departmental or workgroup levels in large organizations or as an enterprise solution in small to midsize companies.

TOWER Software: TRIM Context

TOWER Software

12012 Sunset Hills Road

Two Discovery Square

Suite 510

Reston, VA 20190

Phone: 703.476.4203

Fax: 703.437.9006

E-mail: info@towersoft.com

Web: www.towersoft.com

TOWER Software's award-winning solutions empower more than 1000 organizations to manage and secure their vital information assets. The TRIM Context software solution manages business information through its complete lifecycle. The application incorporates Document Management, Records Management, Email Management and Workflow, all in a single, integrated platform.

A Proven Solution

TRIM Context manages and secures vital information assets, enabling the automatic capture of information while maintaining current daily procedures. As a result, compliance with legislative, regulatory, and corporate standards and mandates is achieved. Along with TOWER Software's world class support, this powerful solution makes an ideal platform for your corporate ECM system.