Annual growth: 88.8%
Category: Knowledge management
Employees: 165
CEO: Bruce W. Armstrong
Competitors: Kana Software, RightNow Technologies, ATG
Knova's mission: to find the answer you're looking for without paging through scads of irrelevant documents.
Its "service resolution management" software is a natural-language search system, designed for customer-service personnel and customers themselves. Customers include AOL, Apple Computer, Merrill Lynch, McAfee, Novell, Intuit, eBay and Microsoft.
Knova was formed last year when privately held Kanisa, which had developed unstructured search technology, acquired publicly held ServiceWare, a provider of I.T. help desk software. Presto: The company's revenue appeared to jump 88.8% in a year.
But president and CEO Bruce W. Armstrong says "organic" growth has been strong, too, noting that revenue for the first half of 2006 is up 31% over the same period a year earlier.
Its trick: Knova deflects calls using its Web self-service software. If customers do call, its tool helps agents get answers to their questions more quickly-about 20% to 30% faster, according to Armstrong.
"Most of the high-tech guys," he says, "want you off the phone as quickly as possible."
Projects: Management 
