Opencalais lets you submit a string (REST API) ....and it will analyze that string and break it down into named-entities, relationships, keywords, etc.

Are there better tools other than opencalais? (both free and commercial)

I presume that you have done an unsuccessful web search or you don't even know what to search exactly.

So, first I give you pertinent keywords: Information Extraction (IE) of which Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a subtask.

Indeed OpenCalais is listed in that Wiki