Information Management’s “40 Vendors We’re Watching” 2012 is a list of up and coming vendors on our radar that are doing their part to shape the groundswell in information management technology in the 21st Century.

As our editors and advisers reviewed the strengths and of each of these companies, we determined that five main themes were apparent: analytics/visualization, big data, business intelligence, database, integration/governance. Our business intelligence category features innovative providers of toolsets that reach across multiple information needs of reporting and warehousing, and new BI modalities including collaboration, self-service and mobility. [Note: Some vendors cross multiple categories.]