By Tim Ferguson, 11 August 2008 15:30
NEWS
Semantic web technology is on the verge of becoming commercially viable for businesses looking to develop their web capabilities.
That's according to John Davies, head of next generation web research at BT, who told silicon.com: "We've really seen the emergence of semantic web from the research lab. We're just on the cusp of R&D to a range of real world applications."
Tech Hotspots: The list
1. Silicon Valley
2. Bangalore
3. London
4. Tokyo
5. Boston
6. Cambridge
7. Shanghai
8. Tel Aviv
9. Seoul
10.Beijing
11.Chennai
12.Pune
13.Singapore
14.Helsinki
15.Moscow
16.Hong Kong
17.Hyderabad
18.New York
19.Sydney
20.Shenzhen
Semantic web - a concept championed by 'father of the web' Tim Berners-Lee - is the development of a world wide web where the context of information and services is defined to make web content more searchable and useful.
Davies explained there is now a greater focus on what semantic web technology can do for businesses and how it might be taken up more commercially.
"Semantic web has been around for a while now. A lot of work has been done on the building blocks," he explained.
There will be significant increases in the real world application of semantic technology over the next 12 to 18 months, according to Davies who cited examples where semantic web technology is already in use.
Yahoo! has developed the SearchMonkey service, which makes web content more useful and visually appealing by adding semantic information, which in turn can drive traffic.
Similarly, Thomson Reuters has made semantic technology available to others through its OpenCalais service, which was originally developed to boost the company's algorithmic trading capabilities.
Microsoft is also investing in semantic web after acquiring natural language search firm Powerset for $100m earlier in August.
Davies said BT is developing semantic technology able to interrogate a range of databases through a single search query.
BT is already using this tech in its sales and billing departments and plans to roll it out to its business customers in the near future.
In the long term, Davies says semantic web tech could be applied to service oriented architecture and used to search for online services in the cloud.
Comments
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1. Tom Tague
Tim:
Tom Tague from the Thomson Reuters Calais initiative here.
For the most part I’d like to second your opinions on the transformation of the Semantic web from the world of invention to the world of innovation. At Calais we are witnessing first hand an explosion of interest in applying these technologies to real world issues. As a simple evidence point – over 5,000 developers have registered to use the Calais service in the last six months resulting in dozens of interesting and innovative applications.
But – I’d like to challenge you and your readers to think well beyond search as the end target for semantic capabilities. While search has served us well for the last decade as a tool for gaining access to an exploding content ecosystem – it is rapidly becoming apparent that search is perhaps not the best tool for actually integrating and using the wealth of content assets becoming available. In short – users want to do more than simply find things – they want those things to work together to provide answers, functionality and results. This, at heart, is what the Semantic web is about.
The next 12-24 months should be interesting. We’re in the midst of seeing the classic expectations mismatch that occurs when a sophisticated technology starts to become visible to real world users. We technologists are happy the technology works at all – and users are unhappy because it doesn’t meet the hyped up expectations that have been fed to them. Our challenge as technology innovators is to bridge that gap.
2. anonymous
John will be speaking more about semantic technology in Europe at the European Semantic Technology conference in Vienna in September. Most if not all of the companies mentioned in your article will also be present at the event.