For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

What Semantic Technology Means To Application Development Professionals

Semantic Technology Is Now Ready For Increased But Focused Use

by Dave West, October 2, 2009

Semantic technology has been incubating for the past 10 years, but most application development professionals view it with skepticism or outright distrust, believing that the dream of semantic technology is impractical in a time of stretched budgets and . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Autonomy Swallows Interwoven: What It Means To I&KM Pros

by Tim Walters, Ph.D., Leslie Owens, March 12, 2009

In an unexpected move, Autonomy announced in January 2009 that it will acquire Interwoven for $775 million. Interwoven's document management and Web content management (WCM) products align with Autonomy's search and discovery solutions. With another acquisition . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

The Critical Role Of A SharePoint Information Architecture

It's A Blank Slate And A Chance To Get It Right This Time

by Leslie Owens, Rob Koplowitz, February 24, 2009

SharePoint buyers expect intuitive navigation, contextual search, and easy administration out of the box. But such benefits depend on how content is structured, labeled, and categorized, and they require a nuanced understanding of how different audiences . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Data And Content Classification: Your Trusted Information Backbone

by Rob Karel, Leslie Owens, January 14, 2009

The information that powers your business — like a sales forecast or voice of the customer analysis — mixes data (such as inventory counts) and content (such as promotional strategies). Enterprises rarely store such data and content in the same place . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

How To Build A High-Octane Taxonomy For ECM And Enterprise Search Systems

by Leslie Owens, November 17, 2008

Enterprises invest in big-ticket information management software such as search, portal, and enterprise content management (ECM) systems, in an effort to eliminate information silos and increase content reuse. To reach such an ambitious goal, it's vital . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Don't Throw Away That Corporate Taxonomy Just Yet!

Why Social Tagging Won't Replace Formal Classification

by Leslie Owens, January 30, 2008

Social tagging is a popular approach to organizing and finding digital content — such as Web pages, videos, and photos — on the Web. Useful on a personal level, social tagging can also benefit enterprises that currently use more formal methods like taxonomies . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Information Classification Must Reach Beyond Knowledge Management

There Are Many Faces Of Information Classification

by Paul Stamp, Barry Murphy, Stephanie Balaouras, October 2, 2007

Information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals incorrectly assume that information classification is all about making information easier to find. This narrow vision ignores other critical reasons for classifying information — such as ensuring . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

Executive Q&A: Social Tagging For eBusiness

Answers To eBusiness Professionals' Common Questions About Social Tagging

by Sarah Rotman Epps, September 28, 2007

Social tagging, a way for consumers to label and search for products and content on the Web, is now cropping up on mainstream eBusiness sites across industries, including retail, travel, financial services, and healthcare. As part of a larger trend toward . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

You Own the Corporate Taxonomy; What Now?

by Matthew Brown, December 12, 2006

Taxonomy is the longest "four-letter" word in the English language to most information and knowledge management professionals — especially those who find themselves in charge of a corporate taxonomy project. Many enterprises view taxonomy projects with . . .

Exploiting Unstructured Information In Pharma

Harness Content To Spur Discovery And Mitigate Regulatory And Legal Risks

by Laura Ramos, January 6, 2006

Bowing to regulatory mandate, pharmaceutical manufacturers manage unstructured information — narrative and images typically found outside relational stores — as an obligatory expense. But as the risk of regulatory and legal challenges increase, pharma . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Information Management 101

How To Tackle An Enterprise Information Management Strategy

by Barry Murphy, January 3, 2006

Organizations constantly search for ways to innovate and improve performance. To gain competitive advantage, many desire to more effectively leverage information within their many electronic and manual systems. After all, abundant information — about . . .

Yahoo! Buys del.icio.us, Bets Big On Tagging

Yahoo!'s Social Computing Strategy Takes A Step Forward. Tag, You're It.

by Charlene Li, December 12, 2005

Yahoo! bought social bookmarking and tagging leader del.icio.us to add bookmark tagging to its social computing portfolio. The value of tagging is that when individuals label something online, they call it out as valuable. If enough people tag Yahoo!-stored . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Get On The Road To Taxonomy Success

by Laura Ramos, November 24, 2004

While taxonomies enhance the value of portal, information retrieval, and enterprise content management projects, they represent substantial investments to firms unprepared for the cultural and process changes required. The road map to taxonomy success . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Making Automated Classification Work

by Laura Ramos, November 1, 2004

Interest in automated text-classification systems continues to grow, but most firms struggle with the essential building blocks of taxonomy, concepts, and classification rules. The use of hybrid approaches — that leverage the speed of automation and the . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Seamagix Use of Ontology's Shows Promise for Leveraging Unstructured and Structured Content

by Robert Markham, September 11, 2003

These are early days for technology that provides semantic relationships between structured and unstructured content. This should not dissuade businesses from looking for specific high-value use cases for the application of these technologies.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Understanding Ontology

by Henry Peyret, May 8, 2003

The most important thing about ontologies to understand and act on is that, because the most useful ontologies must be specific to a given domain, users should understand the domain, scope and quality of any prebuilt ontology used by their software.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Vendors Start to Focus on Life Cycle in Updated Taxonomy Management Tools

by Laura Ramos, March 11, 2003

Only a few taxonomy development tools offer means for tracking change — and the process can be expensive to manage. If developing complex taxonomies consider technologies that support a multi-user development and maintenance workflow.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Taxonomies, Ontologies Make Search More Accurate

by Paul Sonderegger, Harley Manning, February 27, 2003

Search engines must guess at what users want and what documents mean. Taxonomies and ontologies help search by describing how terms relate to each other. But as the total number of concepts grows, both techniques hit limits.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Perspective on Taxonomy Management and Common Pitfalls to Avoid

by Daniel W. Rasmus, January 8, 2003

Among the pitfalls in taxonomy management are a lack of a direct, measurable link between taxonomy projects and business objectives, and a failure to anticipate, staff and support continuing resources to manage taxonomy change.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Best Practices in Taxonomy Development and Management

by Laura Ramos, Daniel W. Rasmus, January 8, 2003

Successful taxonomy projects, either manual or automated, will share well-supported business objectives, solid funding, ongoing staffing and a measurable process for managing discovery, application, analysis and change of taxonomy elements.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Autonomy Connects With Homeland Security

by Daniel W. Rasmus, October 22, 2002

The Office of Homeland Security is the model of a good discovery tool customer because it has clear goals, a large amount of content related to those goals and a mandate to coordinate action based on the suppositions of the system.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Intelligent Infrastructure: Market Consolidation in the Right Direction

by Daniel W. Rasmus, August 28, 2002

The acquisition of Quiver by (Inktomi) and Semio (by Webversa), both of which deliver automated metadata discovery, navigation and management for unstructured content, point toward building infrastructure and away from vertical integration.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Classification Market Consolidation: Portal Perspective

by Laura Ramos, August 27, 2002

Organizations interested in this combination of technology should approach this solution with caution until Webversa can demonstrate that a Web Services standards-based version of the Semio classification engine delivers relevant results reliably.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

LexisNexis and Verity Team to Fast-Track Taxonomy Development

by Laura Ramos, July 22, 2002

Verity and LexisNexis have worked together for years on joint customer projects, but now these leaders have joined forces to deliver an actual product, acknowledging the demand for prebuilt taxonomies is worthy of their joint development effort.

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Not Just Deja Vu: Inktomi's Second Classification Agreement Produces a Competitive New Offering

by Laura Ramos, May 29, 2002

Companies frustrated with the focus of first-generation search on content processing and administration should investigate the Inktomi/Stratify combination.