We’re into the final editing of the Intranet Futures paper I’ve been working on. Following the previous post about trends in Intranet Futures, I wanted to focus specifically on one topic that I’m finding quite exciting. A groundswell of activity around semantic technology promises to have a major impact on enterprise information discovery. Which means, simply speaking, that the power of Intranets to deliver relevant and useful information when needed may soon begin to be fully realized.
In the paper, I discuss how the number of applications using semantic technologies to describe data will grow, along with user-friendly lenses that facilitate the ability to view and combine data and relationships in different ways.
For years, there’s been a frustrating chasm between Intranets, knowledge and work processes. And when organizations finally begin to understand the value of connecting these into a seamless experience, even the best technology struggles to make sense of the unstructured and meaningless morass of information that burdens most enterprise information systems.
I recently spent an afternoon talking with Sean Martin of the Cambridge, MA-based company Cambridge Semantics. As we chatted, it quickly became clear to me how powerful this technology is, and how the pieces of the solution; common languages, formats and ontologies, are finally coalescing to allow for some real-world examples of the semantics in action.
But, explained Sean, “Semantically described and integrated information does not reach its potential unless it surfaces to managers, scientists, and knowledge workers in flexible applications that adapt dynamically to changing contexts and requirements.”
To achieve this, Intranet management teams will need big-picture thinkers who have both a wide view of enterprise information flows and a focused understanding of how individuals in an organization work. Imagination and creativity will also be needed to identify and deliver these unique and powerful views into the enterprise.
Today’s nascent semantic projects may be located in the research departments or test labs of a typical larger enterprise. Getting these projects out of the lab and surfaced up to the accessible, consumed layer of the Intranet that most employees see day to day will be the main challenge for Intranet leaders and CIOs in near future.
To prepare for this, today’s Intranet managers must begin to think more deeply and strategically about the future of company information systems, and do their part to engage with research and IT teams to make the semantic Intranet a reality.
The reason I find semantics so exciting is not only the promise of the technologies themselves, but additionally in the potential semantics has of evolving the role and mission of the Intranet manager. Semantics may be, finally, the place where enterprise data architects come out of the corner to shake hands with the Intranet team. And, in turn, the Intranet team moves beyond content templates and UE standards to understand and implement the tools that will turn their Intranet into the the powerful and valuable information system it can and should be.
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