Earlier this month Gartner named semantic technologies to its top ten trends list (see our story here). Recently, we caught up with Gartner vp and distinguished analyst Debra Logan, the lead author on the semantic technologies section of the Top 10 Technology Trends Impacting Information Infrastructure, 2013, to learn more about sem tech’s earning a place on the list.

One interesting point Logan made is that the top ten trends list actually is a reflection of inquiries Gartner sees from its end-user clients. So, semantic technologies’ spot on the list would seem to indicate a bubbling-up of real-world, enterprise interest. As Logan sees it, it’s very much about information overload, about minimizing the risk and maximizing the value of the data on their hands, and about the availability now from providers like Amazon and Google of infrastructures for analyzing Big Data sets.

“If we could get the same meaning from data, we might actually know what is going on, because we sure don’t now,” says Logan, of the quandary facing enterprise IT leaders. “They are struggling with definition issues and reconciliation because of the proliferation of different IT systems.”

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Semantic technologies have made it to Gartner’s list of the top technology trends that will impact information infrastructure this year.

The research firm yesterday released the list of nine trends that it says will play key roles in modernizing information management and in making the role of information governance increasingly important. Semantic technologies come in at No.3 on the list – right behind closely-tied-to trends Big Data and modern information infrastructure.

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