Tacit Software

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Tacit Software
Tacit Software logo
Type Private
Founded 1997
Headquarters Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Key people David Gilmour, Founder and CEO
Industry computer software
Products ActiveNet, illumio
Employees 30 (2007)
Website www.tacit.com

Tacit Software is a company that provides expertise and knowledge search software for enterprises and consumers.

The company was founded in 1997 as Tacit Knowledge Systems by David Gilmour, the founder of Giga Information Group (now owned by Forrester Research) and is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA.[1] The company is funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson (Steve Jurvetson is a company director), Woodside Fund, Alta Partners and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). In-Q-Tel was also an early investor in the company.

Contents

[edit] Company History

Tacit’s first product, KnowledgeMail, was released in late 1999. KnowledgeMail was an expertise location system that automatically read email and other documents to form profiles of user interests and expertise. In 2001, KnowledgeMail received a Crossroads A-list award in the Operations and Fulfillment category.[2] Later in the year, KnowledgeMail was adopted by Aventis (now Sanofi-Aventis. In April 2002, an analyst with Gartner Research wrote a case study of Aventis’ three month pilot of KnowledgeMail for 435 associates:

“Aventis identified that productivity improvements, just from the three-month pilot, were equivalent to 7.8 months of research time saved. In the pilot, Aventis also evaluated usability/friendliness as high, 4.1 on a 5.0 scale, and workplace acceptance as high, 83 percent of pilot users asked that the ELM capability not be taken away. Time to value was very short, with almost immediate impact. Payback of the investment on ELM could be achieved in four months.”[3]

Based on its pilot results, Aventis implemented KnowledgeMail throughout its R&D organization. In 2002, Aventis won an InfoWorld Top 100 award for its implementation of Tacit KnowledgeMail.[4]

In 2003, Tacit introduced ActiveNet, a browser-based version of KnowledgeMail. In 2003-2004, several additional companies adopted ActiveNet and Tacit’s underlying technologies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.[5] Lockheed Martin, for example, picked Tacit over five other expertise location vendors and later rolled the product out in its Space Systems Division. Ron Remy, the Deputy CIO for Space Systems, said, “We had a beryllium-welding problem solved by linking up two people who worked down the hall from each other, and they didn't realize that one had the answer the other one needed to solve this very serious technical problem that was holding up the entire project. We deemed the pilot to be very successful.”[6]

In 2003, Tacit was selected as one of AlwaysOn’s Top 100 Innovative Private Companies.[7] Tacit also was selected to KM World’s Top 100 Companies That Matter list for 2004[8] (the company was also selected in 2005).[9]

In 2006, Tacit introduced a new product called illumio. illumio makes Tacit’s expertise location technology available to everyday Internet users. In an article published in May of 2006, John Markoff of the New York Times wrote:

“Software such as Illumio is representative of the rapid emergence of new markets for digital information, said Michael Schrage, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. This represents the eBayification of organizations," he said. "The reality is that organizations are run off of informal connections and tools such as this facilitate gray markets in information and interpersonal exchange. Tacit's top achievement in its software for connecting people and expertise may be in a design that keeps personal information private.”[10]


[edit] Intellectual Property

Tacit holds 13 patents.[11] These patents pertain to the following:

  • Creation of user profiles with public and private components
  • Assigning confidence levels to topics as they relate to users
  • Methodologies for accessing user profile information



[edit] References

  1. ^ Davidson, Paul. (June 13, 2004) USA Today Tacit Finds Matches in Company E-Mail
  2. ^ Crossroads 2001 A-List Award Winners
  3. ^ Caldwell, French. (April 2, 2002) Gartner Case Study #CS-15-9726: Connecting Experts - Knowledge Management at Aventis
  4. ^ InfoWorld 2002 InfoWorld Top 100
  5. ^ Kaihla, Paul. (January 1, 2004) Business 2.0 The Matchmaker in the Machine
  6. ^ D’Agostino, Debra. (July 9, 2004) CIO Insight Web Extra: Who’s On First?
  7. ^ AlwaysOn Network: Top 100 Companies for 2003
  8. ^ KM World 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management 2004
  9. ^ KM World 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management 2005
  10. ^ Markoff, John. (May 29, 2006) New York Times Software to Look for Experts Among Your Friends.
  11. ^ United States Patent Office patents: 6115709, 6421669, 6154783, 6205472, 6253202, 6377949, 6405197, 6640229, 6647384, 6668251, 6711750, 6832224, 6970879

[edit] External links

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