A new month, shorter than others in length but no in news intensity, at least referred to semantics. Related to Knowledge Management, we find several pieces of news about Companies that work with semantic technologies. For instance, Empolis an Attensity group company and leading provider in business user applications that generate value from unstructured data has been recognized as one of the world’s most important companies in the field of knowledge management by the prestigious list of “KMWorld’s 100.
But the most commented movement in this area has been the Open Text acquisition of NStein, the Canadian company that offers some pretty nifty semantic technology, which helps generate semantic metadata for FT.com’s Newsift site. So, Open Text a Canadian company too, that is specialized in content management joins the semantic wave.
Continue reading 'Semantic Technologies Monthly Review. February 2010'»
Author: Sergio García. Telefónica I+D
For decades, the World Wide Web has evolved as a network of documents connected through hypertext links. These documents have usually been conceived to be read by humans and during the last decade, the semantic web initiative emerged to develop a set of languages and tools for computers to understand the web content. Based on the Semantic Web standards, the Linked Data initiative consists in a set of best practices to publish structured data on the Web, establishing a Web of Data.
Standards and Principles
Continue reading 'Linked data and Semantics'»
Author: José Manuel Cantera Fonseca, Telefónica I+D
HTML4, the language of the Web, is intended to define the content of a web page from an structural and presentational point of view but not from a semantic point of view. For instance, in HTML4 a <table> element can be used to present information about different entities such as cars, hotels or others. However there is no a machine-readable format that allows to indicate unambiguously the semantics of the information or contents presented. In addition HTML4 relies on the usage of the semantically-neutral <div> tag which is used to group content.
HTML5 is the next major version of HTML. Initially developed by the WHATWG, now is in process of standardization by W3C. One important step ahead brought by HTML5 is the introduction of new elements which enable the creation of web pages with more explicit semantics, leveraging the traditional usage of the semantically-neutral <div> tag:
Continue reading 'HTML5 and Semantics'»
Value-IT
Javier Martínez Elicegui
Of course, day after day the number of applications of semantics in the enterprise is continually growthing. This post shows a case of application of these technologies on BSS/OSS systems.
BSS/OSS systems are usually very complex systems, with lot of interfaces, lot of different users, lot of applications related… Besides this, in the last years there has been a constant competitive preusure on these systems requiring them more functions and less cost to be managed. This fact has marked a quick evolution in this kind of systems:
- Software that needs to be modified each time a new requirement is requested.
- Software including a configuration file holding the parameters to adjust to the different needs of each installation or context.
- Software incorporating configuration management functionality.
- Software with great complexity and high parameterization capabilities. In this case the incorporation of new scenarios/processes does not need a new version of the software, but it demands a complex configuration task (e.g. for each new product there are setting with all features of sale, provisioning, billing, risk control, bundling with other products, etc.).
- Software using a Knowledge Database that provides flexibility to pick up all kinds of concepts, relationships and patterns that the administrator needs to use, in a consistent and not redundant way, as seen in the next figure. This requires the introduction of a semantic layer over the relational database.
Telefónica has reached this last stage in the evolution of BSS/OSS using Semantic and Data Mining techniques in its tariff system. The tariff system is complex to configure, hence it requires very specialized people, errors are common, and they are expensive to maintain.
Continue reading 'Semantics to enhance BSS/OSS'»
Semantic Technologies are gaining momentum and month after month we have reiterative evidence of that. The number of companies that are getting funding for new Semantic projects, and the number of services that use semantics continued during this 2010 first month the pace of the last months.
Other thing that we observe is that the areas where Semantics are strong (search, ad, health…) continue betting on these technologies. Among these areas undoubtedly “Search is king”. During an interview and a preceding presentation, Scott Prevost, principal development manager for Bing search technology at Microsoft, touted developments in search, as well as possibilities during the Web 3.0 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. Microsoft confidence on those technologies moved this company to acquire Powerset two years ago. Now they think that Semantics will be paramount in the evolution of search and that Social Networks will be the key driver:
“When the revolution is happening in Iran and people are using Twitter as the only form of communication, ideally, the search engine should understand what that is, understand from the social network what are the important communications and help to organize that”, said Scott Prevost, principal development manager for Bing.
Continue reading 'Semantic Technologies Monthly Review. January 2010'»
In the latest posts we have reviewed the present situation of Semantic Technologies for enterprises from several points of view: providers, technologies, demand.
Undoubtedly we can claim that these technologies are mature enough to go to market, there is a big number of providers with interesting solutions, and there is demand for these technologies in lots of sectors. Sometimes companies don’t know that semantic technologies can be the solution to some of their problems, but they know that something must be done to manage the increasing amount of data, and of course STE will have a say in that.
Continue reading 'Semantic Technologies can be profitable, of course'»
Value-it “Demand Driven Report” is very rich in data, conclusions, results, undoubtedly a reference document for people who want to know about Semantic Technologies possibilities. But a one hundred pages document is perhaps too much document for people who only want to have a high level picture.
For this reason it is worth to highlight the most relevant key findings:
- Semantic Technologies for the Enterprise can facilitate business recovery: On the present situation this fact must be taken into account for some companies.
- Many IT decision-makers have little knowledge of STE: It is clear that STE suppliers have not done a good job disseminating semantics, this is a “must change” for the future.
- IT managers want to know more about STE: Though semantic has not been well sold, IT managers know that something to manage the data overflow must be done, for this reason they want to know more about STE possibilities.
- Information-driven industries will benefit first and most from STE: Of course, in that places where information has a high value, semantic technologies will gain momentum soon.
- Approaches taken will vary by sector requirements: Depending in the need of the sectors, the STE solutions could be different
- Consumer-focused functionality will raise awareness: Speech recognition, new interfaces…, could be fundamental factors to bring STE closer to consumers
- Suppliers must work harder to make the case clear: Again, there is a consensus about the utility of these technologies but there is a sensation that something has not be done well by supplies
- Growing markets in speech recognition can anchor growth for STE: Speech recognition can be the open door to STE for lot of applications.
In short, there is a clear opinion that STE can be useful but there is a impression that something is not well done, mainly by STE vendors. All these findings must move us to a reflection about how we must continue to make more attractive these technologies from now on.
Of course, the main important point when you try to sell something is the existence of “Demand“. It doesn’t matter we are speaking about a product, a service, or why not, a technology.
For this reason I think that “Demand driven report” is a fundamental document for those who are interested in semantic technologies. Lots of posts and articles have been written about Semantic Technologies but not too much of them are centered in the main question for any business: Who is going to be interested on these technologies?. In this document Value-it team has been working hard on analyzing different sectors, diving in each one to pinpoint in which areas the Semantic Technologies could fit.
Continue reading 'Value-it. First deliverables main results. Demand Driven Report'»
One of the most relevant results of Technovision report is the identification of blockers to move semantics from laboratory to market. We all know that the introduction of new technology trends is usually a difficult task.
Although there is a big consensus about the acceptable maturity level of STE, it is not easy to measure beforehand the resistance and difficulties to implement solutions as the STE. Some barriers such as legacy systems, inertia, and staff habits ought to be overcome in order to achieve successful implementations.
Continue reading 'Value-it. First deliverables main results. Technovision Report (Market and Technology blockers)'»
Among the data that this document edited by Value-it team includes I would like to highlight the data about pilot implementations.
The main conclusions are:
- USA is in front of the classification
- Still public sector is the “big client”, if we add up defense, public sector and healthcare, the results account for almost of half of the pilot (46%)
Continue reading 'Value-it. First deliverables main results. Technovision Report (Pilots data)'»
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