Five dozen awards

IT business applications trade publication Intelligent Enterprise has released its eighth annual editor’s choice awards. The awards are well influential in the industry, and seek to honor those “most influential vendors driving the intelligent enterprise.” Also included in the analysis prepared by writer / editor David Stodder is the Intelligent Enterprise forty-eight “Companies to Watch.”

Heading the list was a bit of a dark horse in BEA Systems. Intelligent Enterprise complements BEA especially for its AquaLogic and WebLogic products regularly rank tops in reviews. The piece also make note on BEA’s effort to introduce its customer base into service-oriented architecture. BEA made news this year for acquiring Plumtree and Fuego to handle portals and business process management, respectively. Also an interesting choice at number two considering the media negativity, Oracle achieved its position through good old numbers. If, runs the argument, the company’s myriad of acquisitions (Stodder singles out the bigger swallows Peoplesoft and Siebel) stays part of the whole, than the giant will stay planted in “the data-thumping heart.”

The well-publicized Oracle Fusion has the firm managing to redirect and augment energies in analytic applications, business intelligence, e-billing, performance management, process management and SOA management. Really big boy IBM placed third in the Intelligent Enterprise dozen. Stoddard and company cite WebSphere BPM as a step ahead of the competition in SOA. Finishing fourth and receiving kudos for its purchase of supply-chain analytics provider SeeCommerce, NCR’s Teradata Division was fourth.

Moving up the charts, presumably with a bullet, is the currently hustling SAS. Rounding out the top twelve were, in order, Microsoft (who showed guts, writes the author, in going from application- to service-centric milieus); Business Objects; EMC; Progress Software; Hyperion (and notably its master data management solution); Celequest; and Savvion. Onto those to watch go awards, with forty-eight companies divided into various categories and ranked. Taking top spot in the Business Intelligence category was Information Builders, praised for products from its iWay Software company such as AJAX, SOA Middleware and WebFocus.

Chasing Information Builders are the likes of Autonomy, SPSS, Panorama Software, Fair IsaaC, the cleverly / painfully named WebSideStory, Inxight, MicroStrategy, Tableau Software, Actuate, Endeca, Qliktech, and WebTrends. Lombardi is a name closely associated with the cream of the crop in American football. In Intelligent Enterprise’s Business Process Management category, Lombardi software gets a trophy of its own. With the award came the compliment that “Lombardi stands out” in integration of performance monitoring and process management. Next up with Corticon Technologies, Appian, ILOG, and the partnership of Software AG and Fujitsu Software.

Who better to take top honors in Information Integration than Informatica? No one, decided Stodder and Intelligent Enterprise. Following at the heels of Informatica were Tibco, Kalido, Composite Software, Cerebra, MetaMatrix, Siderean Software, and Ipedo. In Performance Management, the slick new Cognos 8 took the prize; integrated authoring, integrated publishing and unified server architecture were noted as putting Cognos over the top. In runner-up positions were Pilot software, Arcplan, Applix, Extensity, Steelwedge Software, and Edge Dynamics.

Lots of worthies duked it out for the Enterprise Applications gold, but SAP AG rose to the top here. SAP NetWeaver was called “compelling.” Mentions thereafter go to Salesforce.com, WebMethods, Fiorano Software, Cape Clear Software, Above All Software, and quickly expanding RightNow Technologies. In Information Management, Mark Logic came out ahead of the pack, with its server able to “[make] good use of the emerging XQuery standard.” Next in the category were Stellent, PlanView, Hyperroll, CA, Adobe Systems (in a comeback fueled by responding to demand for end-to-end and web services), StreamBase systems, and Attensity.