In Crossing The Chasm terminology, “gorillas” are the dominant vendors. Simple message for start-ups – don’t mess with them!

In this post, we want to understand what the gorillas are doing to apply semantic web technology to the enterprise. The gorillas in this market are: Oracle, IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft and SAP.

In Crossing The Chasm terminology, “gorillas” are the dominant vendors. Simple message for start-ups – don’t mess with them!

In this post, we want to understand what the gorillas are doing to apply semantic web technology to the enterprise. The gorillas in this market are: Oracle, IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft and SAP.

Oracle: Embrace & Extend

Oracle is active in the semantic web. This matters to them. They cannot afford another database management system based on RDF to replace Oracle and MySQL. Oracle look at RDF as just another thing to store – like objects. The saw off the threat from object management systems and they aim to see off any threat from RDF triples.

In short, if you want to store RDF triples, your Oracle account manager has the answer for you. Oracle suggests you upgrade to Oracle Spatial 11g, separately-licensed option component that:

“introduces the industry’s first open, scalable, secure and reliable RDF management platform. Based on a graph data model, RDF triples are persisted, indexed and queried, similar to other object-relational data types.”

Oracle also sells a lot of middleware and their semantic web evangelist (Jeffrey Pollock, author of Semantic Web For Dummies) “manages the data integration product portfolio within the Fusion Middleware product family, including:

• Oracle Data Integration Suite (SOA + Master Data)
• Oracle Data Integrator (formerly Sunopsis)
• Oracle Data Quality (Trillium Software)
• Oracle Data Profiling (Trillium Software)
• Oracle Data Service Integrator (BEA Aqualogic DSP)
• Oracle Warehouse Builder (Database)
• Oracle Warehouse Builder Data Profiling (Database)
• Hyperion Application Link (Vignette)
• Hyperion Data Integration Manager (Informatica)

That is a lot of products! It must be a bit confusing for customers. This is typical of a product portfolio that emerges from lots of acquisitions. Look for Oracle to a) enhance all these products in incremental ways using semantic web technology and b) maybe, bring out an overarching new integration product that has semantic web technology at the core. This new product will probably be acquired as that is Oracle’s normal modus operandi.

The markets that Oracle is going after are the same ones we looked at in Part 2 of this series. Bio/Pharma is clearly the most active and has been the factor that pushed Oracle to get active.

What will be interesting is to see what Oracle does at the application layer, at the ERP/CRM layer, to enhance these products using semantic web technology. Our guess is that SAP will lead the way at this layer – more on them later.

IBM: Healthcare

Talk to IBM about semantic web and you are pointed to their research labs. If they are doing more within their many enterprise software products – as they probably are – they are not ready to talk about it yet.

But IBM is active in Healthcare as we reported here.

This fits the IBM strategy. They align everything to customer needs and Bio/Pharma is one area where semantic web technology is core and mission critical (as we report here).

HP: Nothing After Jena

HP reports here that:

“HPLabs management have decided not to continue with an active programme of Semantic Web research at HPL. Members of the Semantic Web research group are moving to other roles, both inside and outside HP.”

I am sure HP will be back when they figure out a strategy that makes sense for them. But if they do nothing else, they will be remembered for their open source contribution to Jena, which is a core part of many solutions.

CISCO: Figuring Out What To Do

CISCO is clearly hearing about semantic web from customers but cannot figure out yet what this means for their products. So they are taking an educational approach, basically saying “talk to us, we get it”:

Nothing new here.

Microsoft

Microsoft is clearly active in semantic search via their acquisition of Powerset and integration within Bing.

But we do not yet see the application of semantic web technology to their core enterprise products. We can envisage application in areas such as Sitepoint, Sharepoint, Great Plains and SQL Server to name just a few. But if they are working on these, they are keeping quiet about it for now.

SAP: Could Be Mission Critical

SAP is active in semantic web. It is possible that they will see it as mission critical.

Here Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster lays out SAP’s general view on semantic technology.

“Wahlster: This capability is vital for the interoperability of software systems that work with different terminology sets. By means of a content description that computers can understand, it enables computers to establish whether two terms refer to the same thing. Usually, if a number of departments within a company develop their own specific terminology, computers are unable to cope because the various terms differ in their syntax. Semantic descriptions enable software to pick out terms with the same meaning.

Computers can then also identify when a description is a special case of another. For example, if a call center takes a customer complaint about a software error, a semantic software system would be able to automatically identify that the call is a special variant of an earlier, more general query. This cuts the workload involved in processing the complaint.”

It is interesting to note here how many people from the academic Semantic Web world in Europe go on to work for SAP.

Most importantly, SAP understands that the key to the semantic enterprise are cross industry standards. It will be interesting to see how SAP leverages XBRL. That could be a sea-change in the enterprise software business.

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Oracle: Embrace & Extend

Oracle is active in the semantic web. This matters to them. They cannot afford another database management system based on RDF to replace Oracle and MySQL. Oracle look at RDF as just another thing to store – like objects. The saw off the threat from object management systems and they aim to see off any threat from RDF triples.

In short, if you want to store RDF triples, your Oracle account manager has the answer for you. Oracle suggests you upgrade to Oracle Spatial 11g, separately-licensed option component that:

“introduces the industry’s first open, scalable, secure and reliable RDF management platform. Based on a graph data model, RDF triples are persisted, indexed and queried, similar to other object-relational data types.”

Oracle also sells a lot of middleware and their semantic web evangelist (Jeffrey Pollock, author of Semantic Web For Dummies) “manages the data integration product portfolio within the Fusion Middleware product family, including:

• Oracle Data Integration Suite (SOA + Master Data)
• Oracle Data Integrator (formerly Sunopsis)
• Oracle Data Quality (Trillium Software)
• Oracle Data Profiling (Trillium Software)
• Oracle Data Service Integrator (BEA Aqualogic DSP)
• Oracle Warehouse Builder (Database)
• Oracle Warehouse Builder Data Profiling (Database)
• Hyperion Application Link (Vignette)
• Hyperion Data Integration Manager (Informatica)

That is a lot of products! It must be a bit confusing for customers. This is typical of a product portfolio that emerges from lots of acquisitions. Look for Oracle to a) enhance all these products in incremental ways using semantic web technology and b) maybe, bring out an overarching new integration product that has semantic web technology at the core. This new product will probably be acquired as that is Oracle’s normal modus operandi.

The markets that Oracle is going after are the same ones we looked at in Part 2 of this series. Bio/Pharma is clearly the most active and has been the factor that pushed Oracle to get active.

What will be interesting is to see what Oracle does at the application layer, at the ERP/CRM layer, to enhance these products using semantic web technology. Our guess is that SAP will lead the way at this layer – more on them later.

IBM: Healthcare

Talk to IBM about semantic web and you are pointed to their research labs. If they are doing more within their many enterprise software products – as they probably are – they are not ready to talk about it yet.

But IBM is active in Healthcare as we reported here.

This fits the IBM strategy. They align everything to customer needs and Bio/Pharma is one area where semantic web technology is core and mission critical (as we report here).

HP: Nothing After Jena

HP reports here that:

“HPLabs management have decided not to continue with an active programme of Semantic Web research at HPL. Members of the Semantic Web research group are moving to other roles, both inside and outside HP.”

I am sure HP will be back when they figure out a strategy that makes sense for them. But if they do nothing else, they will be remembered for their open source contribution to Jena, which is a core part of many solutions.

CISCO: Figuring Out What To Do

CISCO is clearly hearing about semantic web from customers but cannot figure out yet what this means for their products. So they are taking an educational approach, basically saying “talk to us, we get it”:

Nothing new here.

Microsoft

Microsoft is clearly active in semantic search via their acquisition of Powerset and integration within Bing.

But we do not yet see the application of semantic web technology to their core enterprise products. We can envisage application in areas such as Sitepoint, Sharepoint, Great Plains and SQL Server to name just a few. But if they are working on these, they are keeping quiet about it for now.

SAP: Could Be Mission Critical

SAP is active in semantic web. It is possible that they will see it as mission critical.

Here Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster lays out SAP’s general view on semantic technology.

“Wahlster: This capability is vital for the interoperability of software systems that work with different terminology sets. By means of a content description that computers can understand, it enables computers to establish whether two terms refer to the same thing. Usually, if a number of departments within a company develop their own specific terminology, computers are unable to cope because the various terms differ in their syntax. Semantic descriptions enable software to pick out terms with the same meaning.

Computers can then also identify when a description is a special case of another. For example, if a call center takes a customer complaint about a software error, a semantic software system would be able to automatically identify that the call is a special variant of an earlier, more general query. This cuts the workload involved in processing the complaint.”

It is interesting to note here how many people from the academic Semantic Web world in Europe go on to work for SAP.

Most importantly, SAP understands that the key to the semantic enterprise are cross industry standards. It will be interesting to see how SAP leverages XBRL. That could be a sea-change in the enterprise software business.

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