Exploring Two Enterprise Semantic Integration Systems

An Enterprise Semantic Integration System (ESIS) provides cross-domain and cross-department insights by normalizing and merging structured, semistructured, and unstructured data sources from both internal and external source, into a knowledge model that can then be visualized in an integrated portal. The interface of an ESIS shows data, metadata, and semantic connections. Search and analysis tool and integration points to other enterprise systems can be made available to the knowledge worker in the ESIS. In this paper, we first present an overview of the complex task of data aggregation, cleansing, and import into a knowledge model. We go on to explore two major types of ESIS: a market or competitive intelligence system, with illustrative examples Corporate Radar and Business Event Advisor, and a knowledge management system, the Knowledge Discovery Capability. Each of these case studies provides interesting insights into the challenges involved in the design and deployment of an ESIS.