Each year KMWorld identifies a host of technologies that we deem “trend-setting” in the broad sphere of knowledge management. Some of the technologies fall into such “hot” categories as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things. Others are more tried-and-true, providing increasing functionality in enterprise collaboration and information management, text analytics and search, compliance, and information governance, customer service and support, business process management, and case management.

Advancements in technology help the marketplace as well as organizations and individuals. Through digital transformation, enterprises can find the information they need to solve business challenges and satisfy customers. Individuals can benefit from such promising concepts as “precision medicine,” which draws on predictive analytics, semantic data lakes, and machine learning to target treatment.

The offerings on our list of 2017 KMWorld Trend-Setting Products result from innovation and imagination, as well as from evolution, gaining additional features over time. The products reflect the ingenuity of the developers and the diversity of inventions. More than anything else, our 2017 Trend-Setting Products have captured our attention because of their ability to meet business needs by transforming information into insight.

Further descriptions of selected Trend-Setting Products begin on page 12, September/October 2017, Vol.26, Issue 8. 

• ABBYY USA: ABBYY FlexiCapture 12—automatically classifies, extracts, validates, and directs business-critical data from written customer communications and operational processes; automated machine learning techniques help simplify data capture and processing.
• Accellion: kiteworks—external content collaboration platform; enables secure access and sharing of enterprise content from any device, including laptop, desktop, or mobile; enhances business productivity while ensuring data security and compliance. Click here for more product details.
• Access Innovations: Data Harmony 3.12—featuring enhancements to products that include Inline Tagging, MAIstro, Search Harmony, Semantic Fingerprinting, Smart Submit, and XIS.
• Accusoft: PrizmDoc—HTML5 Document Viewer & Imaging Suite; adds high-quality document viewing and imaging to an application; the viewer, supported on virtually any platform and language, is customizable and handles a wide range of document, raster, and vector file formats.
• Actiance: Actiance Platform—delivers compliance across a broad set of communications and social channels with insights on what’s being captured.
• Adlib Software: Adlib Elevate Platform—built on Advanced Rendering technology, helps enterprise organizations in the life sciences, insurance, banking, and energy sectors and others enhance information governance objectives by unlocking the value in unstructured content. Click here for more product details.
• Adobe: Adobe Scan—a free app, that delivers a modern document experience, turning mobile devices into an intelligent scanning and text recognition tool, while Adobe Sign adds ease of use and mobility improvements.
• Alfresco Software: Alfresco Digital Business Platform—powers customer digital transformation; an integrated and open set of process, content, and governance services designed to move beyond traditional siloed BPM, ECM, or vertical-specific packaged applications.
• Aptean: Aptean Factory MES—gives shop floor teams real-time visibility into production and quality operations, empowering a culture of action and enabling the transition toward a paperless shop floor.
• Asana: Asana Project Management—with tasks, projects, conversations, and dashboards, enables teams to move work from start to finish.
• ASG Technologies: Mobius 7.0—a content solution that delivers content services for the modern enterprise; provides access to any type of content, at any time and is deployable on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid model, with advanced redaction and storage rules.
• Atlassian: Atlassian Stack—a collection of Atlassian server and data center products that large enterprises can procure in a single package; simplifies and speeds the adoption of Atlassian tools, enabling companies to modernize cross-team collaboration.
• Attivio: Attivio Platform 5.5—a new version of the Attivio Cognitive Search and Insight Platform that leverages next-generation cognitive capabilities, such as machine learning and natural language processing, to help enterprises fuel every decision and action with insight.
• AvePoint: DocAve Governance Automation Service Pack (SP) 8—provides a single governance system that allows businesses to manage the latest SharePoint versions, including SharePoint 2016, SharePoint 2013, and SharePoint Online.
• Axway/Syncplicity: Axway Syncplicity—secure Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) helps enterprises modernize their data infrastructure to power a digital workplace; removes data silos between employees, partners, and suppliers to improve productivity and collaboration.
• BA Insight: Search for Dynamics—provides instant, contextual, enterprisewide search results related to the specific case or opportunity a user is viewing; automatically searches Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft SharePoint, and content from more than 60 enterprise systems and displays results directly in Dynamics 365.
• Bamboo Solutions: Release of 11 SharePoint 2016 products—enables users to choose a product from a large portfolio of SharePoint solutions, with more on the way.
• Beezy: Beezy—is a comprehensive enterprise collaboration solution for Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint, supporting on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments.
• Box: Box cloud content management—empowers enterprises to revolutionize how they work by securely connecting people, information, and applications.
• BP Logix: Process Director 4.0—low-code, no-code BPM platform for building and operating workflow-driven business applications; fosters fast time to value, flexibility, and insight.
• Bpm’online: bpm’online studio—a synergy of business process management and case management technologies that provide organizations with tools to easily manage and optimize business processes.
• Brainspace: Brainspace Discovery—advanced software for digital investigations and unstructured data analysis; built on the Brainspace platform.
• BrightStarr: Unily—an intranet as a service solution designed to engage employees and ensure high adoption rates, with an intuitive interface and content management system to make content creation easier.
• Cambridge Semantics: Anzo Smart Data Lake—a graph-based solution that leverages the power of semantic technologies on top of big data tools like Hadoop HDFS and Apache Spark.
• Cipher Systems: Knowledge360—leverages natural language processing (NLP) and advanced machine-learning technologies to aggregate and organize information; supports the intelligence process to free analysts’ time so they can focus on developing strategic insights.
• Citrix: Citrix Cloud—fast, simple, and flexible approach to securely managing digital workspaces; decreases cost and complexity; creates and deploys workspaces quickly on any cloud or infrastructure the user chooses.
• Clarabridge: CX Revolution—updates to the Clarabridge suite include the addition of AI-based conversational surveys, omnichannel case management, BOT integration, and predictive analytics to drive CX advances.
• Clarizen: Clarizen Spring 2017 Release—the newest version of the cloud-based platform; collaborative work management software with added features to increase team efficiency, boost collaboration, and accelerate time to value.
• Colligo: Colligo Engage—with enhanced capabilities to extend companies’ existing Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, and OneDrive for Business environments; with additional benefits in online and offline searching, as well as simplified account configuration.
• Concept Searching: SharePoint Add-ins—concept Classifier for SharePoint and conceptClassifier for Office 365 are available as add-ins in the SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016, and SharePoint Online environments.
• Confirmit: Confirmit Horizons Platform—provides end-to-end management of voice of the customer programs, voice of the employee programs, and market research projects.
• Connotate: Connotate Cloud—web data extraction platform in the cloud with the power of the Connotate platform and the flexibility and ease of a managed cloud service.
• Coveo: Coveo Pro Edition—a full family of products for Salesforce; a complete portfolio of AI-powered search solutions that fit customer support needs regardless of business size, complexity, or industry.
• Cryptzone: AppGate— the newest version enables organizations to easily deploy a software-defined perimeter (SDP) for granular access control; the release of AppGate 3.0 furthers the vision for transformational network security.
• Datawatch: Datawatch Panopticon 16—advanced visual analytics platform for the capital markets industry; offers faster trading analytics for expedited time to insight and addresses the need for real-time and historic views for trading effectiveness.
• Dell EMC: Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)—consolidate multiple storage silos into a single, globally accessible repository; manage workloads and scales infinitely with Dell EMC’s third-generation object storage platform, available as software, an appliance, or a hosted solution.
• Digital Reasoning: Synthesys—finds order in data and understands patterns in language; unique abilities enable it to read and understand human-generated data; the cognitive system learns from experience and can turn data into knowledge to accurately answer questions.
• Dropbox: Dropbox Business—secure file sharing and storage solution that appeals to employees and IT admins alike; securely share, sync, and collaborate.
• eGain: eGain Virtual Assistant—life-like, conversational agent providing an interactive and personal way for users to get answers and assistance 24/7; provides frontline support so the customer service staff can concentrate on more complex tasks.
• Egnyte: Egnyte Connect—a smart content collaboration solution; securely access, share, and manage files from an intuitive user interface; use Google Docs, Microsoft Office, and popular third-party app integrations.
• Elastic: Elastic Cloud Enterprise—centrally orchestrate a fleet of Elasticsearch Clusters; provision, manage and monitor Elasticsearch, Kibana, and X-Pack at any scale on any infrastructure while managing everything from a single console.
• Empolis: Empolis Smart Cloud—a platform as a service (PaaS) available for professional information management in the cloud; develop and operate your own applications and adapt them to customers’ working environments.
• Ephesoft: Ephesoft Insight 3.0—a big data analytics platform that leverages Ephesoft’s machine learning algorithms to extract meaningful, actionable information from unstructured data on documents and images in content management systems.
• eSignLive: Mobile e-Signatures—a sign from anywhere, anytime, on any device; mobile support leverages the capabilities of mobile tablets and phones to capture tap-to-sign and handwritten signatures, extensive e-evidence, and more.
• Everteam: Everteam. process—the latest version introduces a new business activity monitoring (BAM) dashboard that helps easily monitor processes; the dashboard is enabled by default, so all the administrator needs to do is configure it.
• Expert System: Cogito 14—cognitive technology based on artificial intelligence algorithms; applies human-like comprehension to make sense of big data and unstructured information such as documents, news and articles, research reports, customer interactions, and emails.
• Extensis: Extensis Portfolio 2017—digital asset management system designed to help companies and workgroups of all sizes efficiently manage asset creation, organization, and use.
• Fujitsu Computers Products of America: PaperStream IP TWAIN and ISIS, PaperStream Capture, and Scanner Central Admin—enhanced image processing and productivity software, provides users with powerful, easy-to-use image enhancement and document management tools.
• GlassIG: Information Governance for Cloud and On-Premise—use to manage information policies and power organizations’ legal and regulatory requirements related to data retention and information lifecycle management.
• Guidance Software: EnForce Risk Manager—designed to proactively identify, classify and remediate private or sensitive data across the enterprise; offers insight and control of electronic data across all endpoints and data stores, no matter where they are located. (To be acquired by OpenText.)
• ie: Harmon.ie Collage—the topic computing solution fully unifies disconnected information from multiple cloud services—all within Outlook, employees’ primary work interface; changes the way information is delivered in the cloud-era workplace.
• Huddle: Huddle Cloud integration with Office Online—collaborate more effectively on Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Word documents; quickly create, preview, and manage Office files within Huddle and then seamlessly transition into Office Online for editing and real-time co-authoring.
• Hyland Software: OnBase 17—with more than 3,000 functional enhancements to OnBase in the release; offers an updated experience with a modern look and feel; an evolved interface to meet users’ ?expectations.
• IBM: IBM Cloud—a new Watson-enabled cloud service designed to help companies extract new insights from video; uses Watson to identify complex content in video and generate metadata that could be used by media companies to better match content with viewers and advertising.
• IDERA: SQL Secure and SQL Doctor—new cloud capabilities that allow data professionals to take advantage of expanding cloud strategies and help DBAs embrace the speed and agility demands of DevOps with database performance and security recommendations designed for the public cloud.
• Igloo Software: Digital Workplace Solutions Portfolio—comes with all required pre- and post-implementation services to enable organizations to address challenges impacting communications, knowledge management, collaboration, and employee engagement and culture.
• IHS: Harmony Enterprise—a scalable, collaborative multi-user platform for IT environments of all sizes; meets the needs of engineers, geoscientists, and analysts to collaborate with others to help deliver a confident final interpretation of oil and gas well performance.
• Inbenta: Inbenta Virtual Assistant, also known as the InbentaBot with Avatar—artificial intelligence interaction, human-like conversation, understands natural language; intelligent, accurate, instant answers and site guidance; easily integrates with voice recognition apps.
• Ingeniux: Ingeniux CMS—decoupled architecture and focus on structured “intelligent” content; delivers big data-like innovation for managing content and digital assets; works in the cloud or in your network to deliver high-performance digital experiences and content at scale.
• IntelliChief: IntelliChief Integration Link—integrates IntelliChief’s automated document management and business processes workflow to business applications; users can access documents and content stored in IntelliChief directly from familiar enterprise resource planning and line of business system screens.
• Interfacing Technologies: Enterprise Process Center Version 10 (EPC10)—a centralized platform that reaches beyond analysts to everyone wishing to collaborate; provides insight into operations to streamline quality, increase productivity, reduce risk, and maximize performance.
• IntraFind: iFinder5 elastic—enterprise search and content analytics solution for your company, supporting natural language processing and deep learning.
• Intralinks, a Synchronoss business: Intralinks VIA Pro Edition—accelerates collaboration with simple, intuitive Workspaces for secure file sync, content sharing, and team collaboration.
• K2: New integration with Microsoft Power BI—enables customers to visualize K2 process data and make more informed decisions to transform and optimize business processes.
• kCura: Relativity 9.5—offers the ability to import and export data to and from your workspace without leaving Relativity. (Company rebranded Relativity at press time.)
• KMS Lighthouse: Lighthouse 5—omnichannel knowledge solution with enhanced integration and sharing capabilities; Lighthouse Desktop, a knowledge solution for contact centers, head offices, and branches; Lighthouse Mobile, enables a distributed workforce to quickly access knowledge in the field.
• Knosys: Knosys Enterprise Content Management—content management capabilities enable business users to create, link, and contextualize information and apply role-based access rights; rich media content, including audio, images, and video, can be imported and managed through a simple web-based console.
• Kodak Alaris: Information Management Solutions—technology for digital transformation; injects insight into business decisions, streamlines internal processes, and helps meet company revenue objectives.
• Laserfiche: Laserfiche 10.2—includes new features and updates to the Laserfiche Server, Windows client, web client, Forms, App, Discussions, Workflow, Federated Search, and Connector.
• LiquidPlanner: LiquidPlanner—predictive project management software for manufacturing and IT teams; new release with advanced custom fields functionality that enables organizations to draw deeper insights and analyze important data.
• Lucidea: Inmagic Presto—a fully web-based knowledge management platform that creates a single venue for managing, finding, and sharing organizational knowledge resources; search across internal and third-party information assets, and leverage the “wisdom of the community” via social tools.
• Magnitude Software: Magnitude RapidDecision 6.5—prebuilt enterprise data warehouse solution includes access to the full metadata model, business glossary, and lineage; expanded access to data within JD Edwards and PeopleSoft ERP systems; delivers a complete, real-time view of business data.
• MaritzCX: MaritzCX Platform—built with a big data backend that enables it to accept data from many different sources; Hadoop and elastic search technologies bring fast answers from the cloud.
• Medallia: Best Practice Packages—include software, predefined configurations, streamlined deployment, enablement materials, and ongoing support; Best Practice Packages available for Medallia for B2B, Medallia for Contact Centers, Medallia for Digital, Medallia for Retail and Medallia for Retail Banking.
• Metalogix: Metalogix Microsoft SharePoint 2016 Success Portal—provides Microsoft professionals with a direct link to the latest information and SharePoint 2016-ready Metalogix solutions to succeed across enterprise, cloud, and hybrid IT environments.
• Microsoft: Team news in the SharePoint mobile app for Android—personalized team news roll-up on your Android mobile device from across sites you’re active in and news suggested by Microsoft Graph; keeps you connected to the news, collaboration, and communication.
• Mindbreeze: Mindbreeze InSpire—high-performance enterprise search and big data solution to use out of the box for all data sources; observes a user’s working methods and the type of information that they find relevant, then differentiates between important and unimportant information.
• Nuxeo: Nuxeo Marketing DAM Accelerator—designed for marketers and business users to manage digital assets; an out-of-the-box application that’s easy to use to foster immediate adoption and rapid time to value; modern, modular enterprise platform with a comprehensive, micro-services API and scalability.
• Onix: Equidox by Onix—adds PDF Export functionality, developed for professionals who struggled to convert PDFs into accessible versions that support WCAG 2.0 and PDF/UA standards.
• OpenText: OpenText Release 16 Enhancement Pack 2 (EP2)—new user interfaces for increased usability, more intelligent search, embedded analytics, and reporting, and mobility for better experiences; focused on cloud optimization, mobility, smart UI, automation, flexibility, self-service, and creative collaboration.
• Oracle: Oracle Cloud—best-of-breed SaaS applications integrated with social, mobile, and analytic capabilities to help deliver the experiences customers expect, the ability to succeed, and the performance the market demands.
• Panasonic System Communications Company: Premier-OCR/PremierCOMPRESSION—document management solution to optimize PDF documents; makes documents more efficient by using OCR and file compression to make files smaller, faster, more accessible, and easier to process.
• RAMP: AltitudeCDN Altimeter—with enhanced enterprise management capabilities including support for OmniCache, making it a centralized management system for enterprise-grade multicasting and video caching.
• RightAnswers: RightAnswers Community—provides a better support experience by enabling customers to help each other; combines community discussions and knowledgebase solutions in one place, making it easier to find the answer.
• SAS: SAS Text Miner—enables users to extract information from a collection of text documents and uncover the themes and concepts that are concealed in them; can combine quantitative variables with unstructured text to incorporate text mining with other traditional data mining techniques.
• SearchBlox Software: SearchBlox Software—now can natively use the Amazon Elasticsearch Service available on Amazon Web Services (AWS); using SearchBlox with Amazon Elasticsearch Service provides customers with a highly scalable, fully managed cloud-based enterprise search solution.
• Search Technologies: Aspire 3.1—with new features including a refactored Salesforce connector; runs in the new connector framework and supports execution in a distributed environment, resulting in more robust, stable features, more flexibility, and improved crawling. (Acquired by Accenture.)
• SearchYourCloud: SearchYourCloud—patented algorithms slice through big data, instantly returning search results; quickly locates content in any location; simultaneously searches all email, desktop, and cloud sources; find what you need without interrupting workflow.
• Seclore: Seclore Enterprise Digital Rights Management (EDRM)—new edition eases use with the launch of a complete agentless EDRM solution; gives enterprises the ability to leverage the power of data-centric security without requiring downloads or agent installs.
• Semantic Web: PoolParty Semantic Suite—semantic data integration and professional knowledge management solution; build knowledge graphs for smart applications or use the semantic middleware for RDF data processing.
• ServiceNow: ServiceNow Intelligent Automation Engine—machine learning capabilities tackle problems in IT; companies can prevent outages before they happen, automatically categorize and route incidents, benchmark performance against IT peers, and predict future performance.
• Signavio: Signavio Process Intelligence—next generation of process mining solutions; signifies the next step in business process management, providing an innovative path to real-time process analytics.
• Sinequa: Sinequa integration with Google and IBM Watson—bolsters capabilities already in place with existing integrations for Microsoft Azure Media Services for image and video treatment; translate text between a large number of languages, analyze and tag images and transcribe video conversations.
• Sitecore: Sitecore Cloud—delivers next-generation platform-as-a-service (PaaS) native support for the entire Sitecore solution; marketers can more quickly execute digital initiatives in the context of customer interactions; leverages the speed and agility of Microsoft Azure’s PaaS development and deployment environment.
• Slack: Slack Enterprise Grid—search, direct messaging, and announcement-focused channels companywide; enables users to find the information and people they need to get work done; unlimited workspaces give every team a focused place to work, with access to the people, information, and apps that matter most.
• Smartsheet: Smartsheet for Google Inbox—layers work management superpowers the Gmail add-on, making it easier to find the right content at the right time and take action; Smartsheet notifications surface in your email’s summary message view so important updates show up at the top of your inbox.
• Squiz: Funnelback—an advanced search tool that delivers an intelligent, tailored, and engaging user experience; harnesses data such as search history, geographic location, and domain name to serve up personalized website content, without users even having to search for it.
• Swiftype: Swiftype Enterprise Search Platform—AI-powered cloud-based content discovery and search platform; with a single search, users can locate information in Salesforce, files on Dropbox, documents in Google G Suite or Office 365, information from internal databases, and conversation threads on Gmail.
• Synaptica: OASIS—enables users to dive inside an image to highlight and annotate points of interest at specific coordinates and levels of zoom; builds up an interactive map of the visual features and the conceptual ideas contained in images.
• TallyFox: TallyFox Tallium—a business ecosystem platform created to facilitate knowledge sharing, content management, and communication; quickly find relevant experts to answer your questions and share experiences via the TallyFox Smart Match Pro algorithm.
• Thru: Thru Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS)—end-to-end file sharing and collaboration solution, built for the business user; offers enterprise-grade security and reliability; easy-to-use interface and deep integration into a variety of business applications.
• Transversal: Prescience—a cognitive technology platform for next-generation knowledge; enables people and machines to interact more naturally to extend human expertise and cognition; secure, reliable enterprise knowledge platform delivered via the cloud.
• Upland Software: PowerSteering Project and Portfolio Management (PPM)—features updated integration capabilities through the Upland Integration Platform, powered by Dell Boomi; connects Upland’s enterprise PPM with its Tenrox Professional Services Automation (PSA) application.
• Vanguard Software: Multilingual IBP Cloud Platform—strengthens unified forecasting and planning with multilingual operability; now supports 104 languages—Afrikaans to Zulu—in a single version.
• Verint Systems: Verint Workforce Optimization for the Mid-Market—available in the cloud or on-premises; provides workforce optimization offerings for businesses with small and medium-sized contact center operations. Click here for more product details.
• Viewpointe: OnPointe—information governance platform to streamline information lifecycle and automate business processes in a dedicated private cloud; leverages best-in-class content and records management, archiving, analytics, and e-discovery technologies to harness information value.
• Vitrium: Vitrium Security—robust, easy-to-use document security and digital rights management software; locks files and ensures they remain secure no matter where they travel or on what device, no matter the type or size of PDF, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document.
• Workfront: Workfront—enterprise work management software gives users control over every task, project, resource, and report, from the initial request to final delivery.
• Wrike: Wrike’s Microsoft Teams Integration—deepens Microsoft Office 365 Integration with Outlook actionable messages; launched concurrently with Microsoft’s chat-based workspace in Office 365, enables enterprises to bring complete project management into Teams.
• Zapproved: Z-Discovery Suite—a modern approach to affordable and sustainable e-discovery; comprised of a suite of cloud-based applications that offers a state-of-the-art solution for managing the e-discovery process.
• ZL Technologies: ZL Enterprise Analytics—offers three core products: Email Analytics, File Analytics, and Log Analytics, all built within the same environment.

SOURCE: KMWorld Magazine