OnToKnowledge Exploitation

1
OnToKnowledge Exploitation

• John Davies
• BT

2
Introduction

• Exploitation modes
• academic technology partners
• industrial technology partners
• case-study partners
• Partner reports
• Summary

3
Principal Idea

• Help realize the full potential of the future
  Semantic Web
• Improve industry understanding of ongoing SW
  developments and the applications it enables
• Exploit the business opportunities these
  developments present
• Push infrastructure development for the Semantic
  Web
• Educate future developers and users of the
  Semantic Web
• through a rich variety of exploitation methods
• tool coherence is key

4
Deliverables

• Technology Assessment (BT)
• Exploitation Plan (CogNIT)
• delivered on time and to budget

5
AIdministrator
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Technological Awareness

• Major benefit from collaboration with leading
  academic partners
• Inside knowledge of W3C activities
• Moved all our software to RDF/RDF-S
• much improved interoperability
• between own tools
• with 3rd party tools
• Actively preparing for DAMLOIL

7
Exposure to case-studies

• Visualisation software now integrated in CognIT
  product
• piloted in Enersearch case-study
• piloted in Swiss Life case-study
• Feedback has influenced design and functionality
  of our commercial products

8
New market positioning

• More focussed on knowledge management
• Generated new customers
• Bouwradius
• GGGD Drente
• Partnership signed with CognIT

9
Increased visibility

• Sesame now freely available
• Generated high visibility
• web-site stats 700 visits from 400 locations
  per month
• considered as DAML infra-structure
• considered as OntoWeb infra-structure

10
Free University Amsterdam
11

• Research
• continuing industry-university collaboration on
  Ontology/SW and its applications
• Education
• Regular student courses WebKR, KMm, E-biz innov
• Executive courses and workshops (ASZ, Bilbao,
  Power ind.)
• Spreading the word
• e.g. coordination of OntoWeb EU network of
  excellence

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• Consulting to companies
• e.g. Aidministrator, Enersearch, Hubwoo,
  SemanticEdge, ContentEurope, ECN, SENA,
  DaimlerChrysler,...
• W3C standardization of OIL successor

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University of Karlsruhe
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• Research
• continuing industry-university collaboration on
  Ontology/SW and its applications
• Education
• Student courses KM, Intelligent Systems for the
  Web ...
• Seminars Knowledge Portals, Semantic Web Mining
  ...
• Knowledge Transfer
• Give talks and presentations (e.g. ECAI 2000,
  PAKM 2000, IJCAI 2001, K-CAP 2001 ..)
• Organization of national conference on Knowledge
  Management (WM2001) and several workshops (e.g.
  ECAI 2000, K-CAP 2001 ..)

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• Spin-off company
• Spin-off company ontoprise GmbH, Karlsruhe,
  Germany
• New research group
• Newly formed group on Knowledge Management at the
  Research Center for Information Technology (FZI),
  Karlsruhe, Germany

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CognIT
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Technological Awareness

• Major benefit from collaboration with leading
  academic partners
• W3C activities feedback
• Interoperatability through RDF/RDF-S
• between own tools
• with 3rd party tools

18
Exposure to case-studies

• CognIT OntoBuilder software explicitly used with
  visualisation software by A12R
• piloted in Enersearch case-study
• piloted in Swiss Life case-study
• Feedback has influenced design and functionality
  of our RD strategies as well as our prototypes

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Adapted marketing position

• Now much more focussed on academic research and
  standardisation initiatives
• This has led to a high validity with new
  customers
• Hydro Aluminium and Metal products
• Depts. of InterPol
• Swedish major engineering company.

20
Increased visibility

• CORPORUM-OntoBuild now publicly available
• Extensive media coverage about OTK and CognITs
  involvement
• OTK extremely positive for commercial Norwegian
  position in high-tech, knowledge intensive
  products and RD.

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Technological Impact

• RD results of OTK considered for inclusion in
  CognITs Knowledge Management software,
• RD within CognIT boosted by participation in
  project,
• RD department grew from 1.5 to 5 people (15 of
  company size)

22
Enersearch
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Exploitation

• Industrial RD consortium
• Disseminating info to members is a core activity
• Ontology-based tools will improve the
  effectiveness and efficiency of this key activity

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EnS and its shareholders

• EnerSearch Industrial Research Consortium
• Shareholders Major EU utilities and IT suppliers
  
• Focus understand opportunities of advanced IT
  for deregulated utility industry
• Goal knowledge creation and distribution for
  shareholders and others
• KM is therefore key!

• IBM (worldwide utility branch)
• Sydkraft (Sweden)
• Eon (Germany)
• Iberdrola (Spain)
• ABB (Sweden/Switz.)
• ECN (NL)
• ENECO (Netherlands)
• Electr. de Portugal

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OTK case study in EnS

• EnS run as small virtual enterprise with big
  international stakeholders
• Disseminating info to shareholders is core
  activity
• OTK case study has already given opportunity to
  work more closely with shareholders, and focus
  better on what their information needs are
• OTK and the Semantic Web developments have been
  presented and discussed several times at
  shareholder board meetings

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Exploitation

• Work with and knowledge transfer to shareholders
  in this area will be continued
• Board meetings, on-site executive workshops,
  projects
• Ontology-based tools will improve the
  effectiveness and efficiency of this key activity
  
• IBM invited OTK/SW work to make a link to their
  US labs
• EnS website is major resource (has even brought
  in new shareholders) and will be significantly
  improved according to OTK lessons learned

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Swiss Life
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Case Studies

• Deployed within Swiss Life
• Possible deployment within Swiss Life
  subsidiaries
• Skills database Organisational Memory
• better internal use of intellectual capital
• better access to information
• Technology and methodological results
• Applied in Swiss Lifes KM programme

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External Exploitation

• Commercialisation of skills management
  application
• discussions ongoing with various potential
  partners
• Organisational Memory course developed
• Universities Konstanz (D), Tilburg (NL), Krems
  (A)
• Tutorial at various conferences
• Various conference talks and publications

30
BT
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Technology Awareness

• Benefit from collaboration with leading academic
  partners
• Adapting all KM tools for Semantic Web

32
Case studies

• Background software WebFerret and foreground
  RDFferret
• piloted in Enersearch case-study
• piloted in Swiss Life case-study
• Feedback has influenced design and functionality

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RDFferret

• IPR - patent application filed
• Publication submitted
• RDFferret - search technology for Semantic Web
• Numerous conference presentations
• KM Europe 2000
• also speaking at KM Europe 2001

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Information Dissemination

• John Davies invited to edit book
• Knowledge Management Information Retrieval
• Focus on OnToKnowledge results
• Contacts with leading and emerging KM players in
  Europe
• CapGemini Ernst Young
• KPMG
• Unisys Consulting

35
Commercial Exploitation

• BT is creating a spin-off company
• Exago
• to exploit KM tools from OnToKnowledge and its
  own research programme
• In commercial confidence!

36
IPR protection

• IPR protection is encouraged in line with UCA
• Decided by individual partner(s) on a
  case-by-case basis
• BT have patented RDFferret
• AIdministrator have made SESAME publicly available

37
Summary

• Extremely high profile project
• Key participant in Semantic Web initiative via
  OIL
• Numerous publications and conferences
• Influencing direction of W3C standards for
  European advantage
• 2 new European ICT SMEs created
• 2 existing European ICT SMEs
• introduced new products and services
• won new customers
• created partnerships