Technopedia taxonomy

[#1]

The taxonomy is the structural cornerstone of the dataset that underpins Technopedia. It provides the first layer of organization, which allows users to make meaningful comparisons of software and hardware products across publishers/manufacturers. It also provides a high-level summary of a product’s characteristics, what function it performs, and, to some extent, what capabilities it has, as well as the underlying technologies it’s built upon.

The Technopedia Taxonomy system is drawn from the collective knowledge assembled in several sources, including well-established taxonomy systems from trusted organizations, reliable websites, and distinguished experts such as Gartner, Forrester, UNSPSC, CNET, Wikipedia, NIST, and a few others. Technopedia Taxonomy is superior to those other taxonomy systems because it’s tailored to meet Flexera customers’ use cases within the context of IT rather than trying to cater to a wide array of generic use cases.

The level of granularity, the breadth and depth of the categories, and the ability to dynamically adjust to changes in customers’ needs, as well as market and industry changes, lend even more advantages to Technopedia Taxonomy. The process upon which a product is assigned the right category is done through the understanding of the product, referencing how the publisher/manufacturer intends to position the product in the market, as well as taking the cue on how the market (and the industry) position the product amongst its peers and competitors.

See the attached spreadsheet for details on Technopedia’s taxonomy, including IDs, category groups, and descriptions.

Category group: 18

Category: 46

• Hardware category: 12
• Software category: 34

Subcategory: 260

• Software category: 200
• Hardware subcategory: 60

Attachment last updated September 7, 2023

Note: Jason_Lilleboe's response was so good that we decided to add it to the main article.

[MAFelder]

Should we check back here to confirm this is the latest version?

[MAFelder]

The category and category group has the same definition, can you supply the definition for the category group?

Thanks!

M

[aalfonso]

Hello @MAFelder,

Thanks for reaching out!

I have now corrected the attachment which displays the 17 distinct category groups in Technopedia.

[MAFelder]

Thank you!

[peteoheat]

I understand from other conversations that the Technopedia Taxonomy comes from an NIST standard. Wondering if you can share which standard that is?  We use Oracle Procurement at my company and it would be great if we could ensure we have the same taxonomy in both sysems. Either by having Oracle consume the NIST standard directly or by feeding the taxonomy from Flexera to Oracle. Could the latter be done via a business adapter?

[Jason_Lilleboe]

The taxonomy is the structural cornerstone of the dataset that underpins Technopedia. It provides the first layer of organization which allows users to make meaningful comparisons on software and hardware products across publishers/manufacturers. It also provides a high level summary of a product’s characteristic, what function it performs and, to some extent, what capabilities it has as well as the underlying technologies it is built upon.

Technopedia Taxonomy system is drawn from the collective knowledge assembled in several sources including well-established taxonomy systems from trusted organizations, reliable websites and distinguished experts such as Gartner, Forrester, UNSPSC, CNET, Wikipedia, NIST, and a few others. What makes Technopedia Taxonomy superior to those other taxonomy systems is the fact that it’s tailored to meet Flexera customers’ use-cases within the context of IT as opposed to trying to cater to wide array and generic use-cases.

The level of granularity, the breadth and depth of the categories, the ability to dynamically adjust to changes in customers’ needs as well as market and industry changes lend even more advantages to Technopedia Taxonomy. The process upon which a product is being assigned the right category is done through the understanding of the product, referencing how the publisher/manufacturer intends to position the product in the market, as well as taking the cue on how the market (and the industry) position the product amongst its peers and competitors. @Resnofendri 

[derrick_fields]

Have there been any changes/updates to the Taxonomy spreadsheets that are attached this article?  

[MAFelder]

From what I can tell @derrick_fields yes. I did notice you can query the taxonomy from the backend. 

[TeriStevenson]

In my environment, category and sub-category are the same with the recent change