Semantic Arts exists to shepherd organizations on their Data-Centric journey.
Our core capabilities include:
• Semantic Knowledge Graph Development and Implementation
• Legacy Avoidance, Erosion, and Replacement
We can help your organization to fix the tangled mess of information in your enterprise systems while discovering ways to dissolve data silos and reduce integration debt.
What is Data-Centric?
Data-Centric is about reversing the priority of data and applications.
Right now, applications rule. Applications own “their” data (it’s really your data, but good luck with that). When you have 1,000 applications (which most large firms do) you have 1,000 incompatible data silos. This serves to further the entrenchment of legacy systems, with no real motivation for change.
Data-Centric says data and their models come first. Applications conform to the data, not the other way around. Almost everyone is surprised at the fundamental simplicity, once it’s been articulated.
It sounds simple, but fifty years of “application-centricity” is a hard habit to break. We specialize in helping firms make this transition. We recognize that in addition to new technology and design skills, a major part of most projects is helping shepherd the social change that this involves.
If you’re fed up with application-centricity and the IT-fad-of-the-month club, contact us.
Read More: What is Data-Centric?
What about those legacy systems?
The move to a more data-centric architecture requires thoughtful planning. Early phases look more like a surgical process of dealing with legacy applications in a way that realizes quick wins and begins to reduce costs, helping to fund future phases. Usually, it looks something like this:
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Legacy avoidance: The recognition that a firm has slowed down or stopped launching new application systems projects, and instead relies on the data that is in the shared knowledge graph.
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Legacy erosion: Occurs when firms take use cases that were being performed in a legacy system and instead implement them directly on the graph. Rather than wholesale legacy elimination (which is hard), this approach allows the functionality of the legacy system to be gradually decommissioned.
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Legacy replacement: Once enough of the data, functionality, and especially integration points have been shifted to the graph, legacy systems can be replaced. Not with “legacy modernization” systems, but with lightweight standalone use cases on the graph.
Read more: Incremental Stealth Legacy Modernization
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ABOUT US
<p>Learn more about our mission, our history, and our team.</p> -
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
<p>See how we are leading the way towards a data-centric future, and those who have taken note.</p> -
PROBLEMS WE SOLVE
<p>Discover how we can help you along the journey.</p>
Taking a different path STARTS NOW. Become Data-Centric to simplify and enhance your enterprise information landscape:
5 Business Reasons for Implementing a Knowledge Graph Solution
1. Comprehensive data integration
2. Contextualized knowledge discovery
3. Agile knowledge sharing and collaboration
4. Intelligent search and recommendation
5. Future-proof data strategy
Integrating semantic capabilities into enterprise business processes has been the foundational shift that organizations such as Google, Amazon, and countless others have leveraged. The results are tangible: increased market share and revenue, lower costs, better customer experiences, reduced risks, and the promotion of innovation.
Semantic Arts’ professional services deliver true solutions (not gimmicks) for current and future information management challenges.
FROM OUR BLOG
Time to Rethink Master and Reference Data
Every company contends with data quality, and in its pursuit they often commit substantial resources to manage their master and reference data. Remarkably, quite a bit of confusion exists around exactly what these are and how they differ. And since they provide context to business activity, this confusion can undermine any data quality initiative. Here...Continue reading→
Facet Math: Trim Ontology Fat with Occam’s Razor
At Semantic Arts we often come across ontologies whose developers seem to take pride in the number of classes they have created, giving the impression that more classes equate to a better ontology. We disagree with this perspective and as evidence, point to Occam’s Razor, a problem-solving principle that states, “Entities should not be multiplied...Continue reading→
Property Graphs: Training Wheels on the way to Knowledge Graphs
I’m at a graph conference. The general sense is that property graphs are much easier to get started with than Knowledge Graphs. I wanted to explore why that is, and whether it is a good thing. It’s a bit of a puzzle to us, we’ve been using RDF and the Semantic Web stack for almost...Continue reading→
When is a Brick not a Brick?
They say good things come in threes and my journey to data-centricity started with three revelations. The first was connected to a project I was working on for a university college with a problem that might sound familiar to some of you. The department I worked in was taking four months to clean, consolidate and...Continue reading→
Toss Out Metadata That Does Not Bring Joy
As I write this, I can almost hear you wail “No, no, we don’t have too much metadata, we don’t have nearly enough! We have several projects in flight to expand our use of metadata.” Sorry, I’m going to have to disagree with you there. You are on a fool’s errand that will just provide...Continue reading→
My Path Towards Becoming A Data-Centric Revolution Practitioner
In 1986 I started down a path that, in 2019, has made me a fledgling Data-Centric revolution practitioner. My path towards the Data-Centric revolution started in 1986 with my wife and I founding two micro-businesses in the music and micro-manufacturing industries. In 1998 I put the music business, EARTHTUNES, on hold and sold the other;...Continue reading→
The Flagging Art of Saying Nothing
Who doesn’t like a nice flag? Waving in the breeze, reminding us of who we are and what we stand for. Flags are a nice way of providing a rallying point around which to gather and show our colors to the world. They are a way of showing membership in a group, or providing a...Continue reading→
The Data-Centric Revolution: Lawyers, Guns and Money
My book “The Data-Centric Revolution” will be out this summer. I will also be presenting at Dataversity’s Data Architecture Summit coming up in a few months. Both exercises reminded me that Data-Centric is not a simple technology upgrade. It’s going to take a great deal more to shift the status quo. Let’s start with Lawyers,...Continue reading→
The 1st Annual Data-Centric Architecture Forum: Re-Cap
In the past few weeks, Semantic Arts, hosted a new Data-Centric Architecture Forum. One of the conclusions made by the participants was that it wasn’t like a traditional conference. This wasn’t marching from room to room to sit through another talking head and PowerPoint lead presentation. There were a few PowerPoint slides that served to...Continue reading→
The Data-Centric Revolution: Chapter 2
Below is an excerpt and downloadable copy of the “Chapter 2: What is Data-Centric?” CHAPTER 2 What is Data-Centric? Our position is: A data-centric enterprise is one where all application functionality is based on a single, simple, extensible data model. First, let’s make sure we distinguish this from the status quo, which we can describe...Continue reading→
gist: 12.x
gist: is our minimalist upper ontology. It is designed to have the maximum coverage of typical business ontology concepts with the fewest number of primitives and the least amount of ambiguity. Our gist: ontology is free (as in free speech and free beer–it is covered under the Creative Commons 3.0 attribution share-alike license). You can use as you see fit for any purpose, just give us attribution.
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