Semantic Web entrepreneur David Provost has published a report about the state of business in the Semantic Web and it's a good read for anyone interested in the sector. It's titled On the Cusp: A Global Review of the Semantic Web Industry. We also mentioned it in our post Where Are All The RDF-based Semantic Web Apps?.
The Semantic Web is a collection of technologies that makes the meaning of content online understandable by machines. After surveying 17 Semantic Web companies, Provost concludes that Semantic science is being productized, differentiated, invested in by mainstream players and increasingly sought after in the business world.
Provost aims to use real-world examples to articulate the value proposition of the Semantic Web in accessible, non-technical language. That there are enough examples available for him to do this is great. His conclusions don't always seem as well supported by his evidence as he'd like - but the profiles he writes of 17 Semantic Web companies are very interesting to read.
What are these companies doing? Provost writes:
"..some companies are beginning to focus on specific uses of Semantic technology to create solutions in areas like knowledge management, risk management, content management and more. This is a key development in the Semantic Web industry because until fairly recently, most vendors simply sold development tools."
The report surveys companies ranging from the innovative but unlaunched Anzo for Excel from Cambridge Semantics, to well-known big players like Down Jones Client Solutions and RWW sponsor Reuters Calais Initiative, to relatively unknown big players like the already very commercialized Expert System. 10 of the companies were from the US, 6 from Europe and 1 from South Korea.
We've been wanting to learn more about "under the radar" but commercialized semantic web companies ever since doing a briefing with Expert System a few months ago. We had never heard of the Italian company before, but they believe they already have they have a richer, deeper semantic index than anyone else online. They told us their database at the time contained 350k English words and 2.8m relationships between them. including geographic representations. They power Microsoft's spell checker and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the Blackberry. They also sell NLP software to the US military and Department of Homeland Security, which didn't seem like anything to brag about to us but presumably makes up a significant part of the $12 million+ in revenue they told Provost they made last year.
And some people say the Semantic Web only exists inside the laboratories of Web 3.0 eggheads!
Provost writes that "the vendors [in] this report have all the appearances of thriving, emerging technology companies and they have shown their readiness to cross borders, continents, and oceans to reach customers." You'd think they turned water into wine. Those are strong words for a study in which only 4 of 17 companies were willing to report their revenue and several hadn't launched products yet.
The logic here is sometimes pretty amazing.
The above examples [there were two discussed - RWW] are just a brief sampling of the commercial success that the Semantic Web has been experiencing. In broad terms, it's easy to point out the longevity of many companies in this industry and use that as a proxy for commercial success [wow - RWW]. With more time (and space in this report), additional examples could be described but the most interesting prospect pertains to what the industry landscape will look like in twelve months. [hmmm...-RWW]
In fact, while Provost has glowingly positive things to about all the companies he surveyed, the absence of engagement with any of their shortcomings makes the report read more like marketing material than any objective take on what's supposed to be world-changing technology.
The fact is, though, that Provost writes a great introduction to many companies working to sell software in a field still too widely believed to be ephemeral. The stories of each of the 17 companies profiled are fun to read and many of Provost's points of analysis are both intuitive and thought provoking.
He says the sector is "on the cusp" of major penetration into existing markets currently served by non-semantic software. Provost argues that the Semantic Web struggles to explain itself because the World Wide Web is so intensely visual and semantics are not. He says that reselling business partners in specific distribution channels are combining their domain knowledge with the science of the software developers to bring these tools to market. He tells a great, if unattributed, story about what Linked Data could mean to the banking industry.
We hadn't heard of several of the companies profiled in the report, and a handful of them had never been mentioned by the 34 semantic web specialist blogs we track, either.
There's something here for everyone. You can read the full report here.
Comments
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Hi Marshall,
Great to watch your analysis of this report.
In general, I have the same feeling as you after reading it. Nevertheless the report is probably the most comprehensive conclusion of the Semantic Web progress in the industrial sector, it is less than a real objective report. As you said, it lacks the discussion on the negative sides and thus we may hardly learn from the report what the most critical lessons we have learned in order to advance the current technology to the real success.
But this report still is a valuable one. It gives us an up-to-the-date picture. My feeling is that there is still a long way ahead.
Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding
|
October 3, 2008 9:46 PM
Hi Marshall,
Great to watch your analysis of this report.
In general, I have the same feeling as you after reading it. Nevertheless the report is probably the most comprehensive conclusion of the Semantic Web progress in the industrial sector, it is less than a real objective report. As you said, it lacks the discussion on the negative sides and thus we may hardly learn from the report what the most critical lessons we have learned in order to advance the current technology to the real success.
But this report still is a valuable one. It gives us an up-to-the-date picture. My feeling is that there is still a long way ahead.
Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding
|
October 3, 2008 9:48 PM
Hi Marshall,
Great to watch your analysis of this report.
In general, I have the same feeling as you after reading it. Nevertheless the report is probably the most comprehensive conclusion of the Semantic Web progress in the industrial sector, it is less than a real objective report. As you said, it lacks the discussion on the negative sides and thus we may hardly learn from the report what the most critical lessons we have learned in order to advance the current technology to the real success.
But this report still is a valuable one. It gives us an up-to-the-date picture. My feeling is that there is still a long way ahead.
Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding
|
October 3, 2008 9:49 PM
Semantic Web progress in the industrial web machines are great.
Hope that the can avoid mistakes, and still grow.
Posted by: www.artikel32.com | October 3, 2008 10:24 PM
Hi Marshall,
Great to watch your analysis of this report.
In general, I have the same feeling as you after reading it. Nevertheless the report is probably the most comprehensive conclusion of the Semantic Web progress in the industrial sector, it is less than a real objective report. As you said, it lacks the discussion on the negative sides and thus we may hardly learn from the report what the most critical lessons we have learned in order to advance the current technology to the real success.
But this report still is a valuable one. It gives us an up-to-the-date picture. My feeling is that there is still a long way ahead.
Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding
|
October 4, 2008 12:14 AM
Hi Marshall,
Great to watch your analysis of this report.
In general, I have the same feeling as you after reading it. Nevertheless the report is probably the most comprehensive conclusion of the Semantic Web progress in the industrial sector, it is less than a real objective report. As you said, it lacks the discussion on the negative sides and thus we may hardly learn from the report what the most critical lessons we have learned in order to advance the current technology to the real success.
But this report still is a valuable one. It gives us an up-to-the-date picture. My feeling is that there is still a long way ahead.
Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding
|
October 4, 2008 12:18 AM
Sorry, Marshall, my computer gets problems and it repeated posting the same comment to your post. I have fixed the problem in my machine. Please remove the repeated comment when you get chance. thank you.
Yihong
Posted by: Yihong Ding
|
October 4, 2008 12:20 AM
Semantic Web... hah
Readers. The SW does not exist, Elvis is Alive and the World is Flat. Live with it!
( marshall... if you keep on posting like this you're going to ruin the surprise party. Control the paparazzi in you for a while ;-)
Posted by: Aldo Bucchi
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October 4, 2008 2:45 AM
Aldo: lol!
Marshall: thanks for the review, the report does make interesting reading. But I was disappointed that Talis wasn't on David's list, and not only because I work for them :-)
Thing is, the company's a long-established and healthy concern primarily providing software/services for UK libraries. However, due to careful market analysis, most of the internal investment is going into the the Talis Platform - essentially SaaS based on known good Web practices and Semantic Web technologies.
Although there is a free & open 'avant-garde' developer side (the N2 community), the Talis Platform is also being used to develop products (and migrate existing products) for the mainstream library community using Web of Data tech. The only difference the end user is likely to see in this context is a general improvement in the applications they use, thanks to serious leverage of the (Semantic) Web.
I guess what I'm saying here goes back to Aldo's comment - regrettably there won't be a surprise party for the Semantic Web, just the existing Web gets better.
Posted by: Danny | October 4, 2008 5:59 AM
Marshall,
What is good for the goose is also good for the gander. The trouble with all matters relating to the "Semantic Web" is that you are trying to define an inhrently nebulous concept.
The "Semantic Web" is a poor moniker for an important thing: A variant of the Web in which the Data is Structured & Interlinked via Hypertext and Hyperdata Links.
If you toss the "Semantic Web" moniker aside, and look at a Web in which you can easily discern a Person, Blog Post, Web Page, Music, Organization, or any other "Thing" that you can conceptualize via its properties, you will arrive at a much clearer place.
When all is said an done, it comes down to this: Today it is common place to link documents together on the Web, and very soon the process of Linking prevalently to other "Things" that aren't documents will follow. But most importantly, it's the same Web, we just have the ability to Link to a broader range of "Things".
Again, toss the "Semantic Web" and "Semantic Technology" monikers aside, they are both major distractions to what is simply about an ultimately obvious enhancement to the very Web we all love, share, and exploit.
If you want to see the description of this Web page as a structured resource on the Web via it's attributes just look at:
1. http://demo.openlinksw.com/proxy/html/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_surveys_semantic_web_co.php
2. http://demo.openlinksw.com/proxy/html/http://www.readwriteweb.com/about_marshall.php -- description of you bio page from this site
3. http://demo.openlinksw.com/proxy/html/http://www.crunchbase.com/person/marshall-kirkpatrick -- this might be you on CrunchBase, and if so update the Wiki as see the data expand
4. http://demo.openlinksw.com/about/html/http://demo.openlinksw.com/about/rdf/http://www.crunchbase.com/person/marshall-kirkpatrick%23this -- this page will expand if you are the person on CrunchBase.
Kingsley
Posted by: Kingsley Idehen | October 4, 2008 2:30 PM
I concur with your review, Marshall, and communicated my request for more analysis and overviews through my post at Free Report on Brochette of Semantic Players
Posted by: Greg Boutin | October 5, 2008 11:56 AM
All,
I just found an old flash animation that we knocked up about a year ago to demonstrate the process of distilling entities from existing Web information resources.
The entities extracted are intra- and inter-connected via hyperdata links rather than hypertext links. To the observer you simply see the same mechanics of URLs in action (of course there is a little more to URIs and URLs, but the details aren't necessary relevant due to the prevalence of RDF middleware).
Links:
1. http://myopenlink.net:8890/DAV/home/kidehen/Public/Presentations/RDF_Middleware_Animation.swf
Kingsley
Posted by: Kingsley Idehen | October 5, 2008 6:27 PM
hi Marshall,
to understand just how serious Expert System is about this space, consider that they are a leading member of
http://fp7.okkam.org/
a European Commission funded project designed to build a global entity identifier server. OKKAM is a sort of GPS system for semantic web entities that anyone will be able to use to publish and share IDs to be able to refer to entities unambiguously across documents, applications, etc...
watch that space, it is going to be interesting.
stefano
Posted by: Stefano Bertolo | October 7, 2008 2:18 AM
Semantic search companies are hot in the VC world -- witness recent successful capital raises from Hakia.com, Textdigger and Cognition Technologies. I think its all about finding a better search engine than Google. Legend has it that Google ousted Yahoo because of their superior search technology.
Posted by: Ted Murphy | October 7, 2008 8:50 AM