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Apoorv Durga

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Kapow rebrands itself and product line

19-Nov-2010

Tags: Portals and Content Integration, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, Vendor Viability & Financials, Kapow Katalyst

Content integration vendor Kapow made a couple of announcements this week, mostly related to re-branding and enhancements to their data integration platform. The key aspects of these announcements are:

1. The new release is called "Kapow Katalyst." While the company's PR and marketing describes it a new platform, it's really a new version of their Web Data Server with enhancements mostly related to the use of Kapow in an enterprise scenario.
2. The company also announced a new technology for browser based integration. Dubbed "Kapow Extraction Browser," it's a headless browser (meaning there's no client and an end user can't use it like they'd use a regular browser) that provides some capabilities for data extraction from web interfaces.

There are many other changes and we'll cover them in detail in our regular update to the Portals and Content Integration Research. However, one important aspect of the announcement that did not seem to have got as much attention as I would have expected is the fact that Kapow also renamed itself from "Kapow Technologies" to "Kapow Software."

Kapow says this signals an evolution from a technology upstart to a more mature software company. To me, it also signals that there might be changes in their strategy and roadmap. Kapow has already evolved from a web clipping company to a mashup vendor and now to a more sophisticated data integration company. With its focus on solutions such as Process Automation, Kapow is also beginning to target areas mostly dominated by more sophisticated integration products. While this might be good news for some customers, it also makes Kapow a heavierweight option, especially if your needs revolve around quick-and-dirty, use-and-retire applications.

We'll keep an eye on how Kapow evolves. Meanwhile if you are exploring options, do remember that the vendor is as important as the product itself (which is why we devote a substantial real estate to the vendor intangibles section in our evaluation reports). So make sure you give appropriate importance to these vendor intangibles and not just concentrate on product features.