Simple Back-end Services for Corporate Semantic Web

Abstract

In order to be adopted within corporate environments, Semantic Web applications must provide tangible short-/medium-term gains. Although corporate Semantic Web offers enterprises new possibilities for enhanced integration of heterogeneous business data, information discovery, and advanced automation of tasks, a cost-benefit analysis is in any case essential. In this paper, we argue that the main costs of ontology development and maintenance can be reduced by either licensing the use of that ontology by other organizations or by outsourcing those tasks to external providers. We also briefly point to the short-/medium-term benefits of corporate Semantic Web arising in the areas of data integration, semantic search, and personalization. This paper concludes with an example of a real-world company providing back- end services for corporate Semantic Web.