Smartlogic Semaphore

What we do: Primarily we produce and deliver Semaphore, a software product that ensures organisations can classify as well as find their information.

We also help clients design, source, develop and deploy enterprise vocabularies and semantic models, which are used by Semaphore to deliver information management.

Being search engine agnostic and enterprise partners of the world's leading search engine providers we advise our clients about which search engines are best for which job, if asked.

Over 200 organisations use Semaphore, worldwide - our customers range from local government to federal agencies, from hospitals to national health providers, from hedge funds to global investment banks and from new media firms to traditional newspaper groups.

What all our clients have in common is a true appreciation for the value of their information assets; how these assets can be used to deliver the best return and a duty of care to deliver the right information to their team, clients and partners when its needed.

Semaphore is semantic middleware (in that it sits between existing systems and is about adding meaning).

In architecture terms it sits between search & information sources and the user applications. Its purpose is to inject meaning and context to the user experience and to add classification metadata to the search index and/or information sources.

Semaphore uses semantic models in the form of taxonomies and ontologies to guide and reflect your view of a subject, both for navigation as well as for classification. The model approach is important as it lets you apply enterprise classification standards to content, and ensures information provided by you is seen in a way that is determined by you.

Why it works: A model approach to search navigation, information management and metadata.

We think that there are three key things that make Semaphore work for our clients:-

1. It's ontology driven: you can organise, manage, control and present your information according to your enterprise standards.
   • Applying classification standards according to ontology derived rules means consistent, auditable, repeatable, reliable and accurate classification. Information properly classified means cost and efficiency savings.
   • Driving the user experience from the ontology means the ability to offer an exceptional user experience. This drives trading volumes for our clients.
2. Semaphore is a single system that brings together ontology management, navigation and classification. Traditionally these are three systems from three different vendors, with all the overhead of integration, licensing and version control between disparate systems. Semaphore eliminates these inefficiencies and risks, and is aggressively licensed to reduce the cost of operations.
3. Semaphore is open: Semaphore adds value to existing investments in search, content management and portal implementations. Semaphore is designed to integrate with all types of content and search. There are out of the box connections to FAST, Google and MOSS and UIMA. The system offers api's to all its information management functions and these api's are open and documented for use by our clients.

   To help explain what we mean, here are four examples of how our clients use Semaphore:

   1. Adding metadata in a Content Management System (CMS)
      Semaphore can add sophisticated metadata in a website CMS – a neat solution where swathes of content lack a useful level of metadata.
   2. Using metadata to drive enterprise or federated search
      Because Semaphore’s taxonomy can include multiple equivalent-terms for words and data-tags, it can drive enterprise search and federated-search solutions. These techniques are part of our business-information portal approach.
   3. ‘Reveal’ content with an enhanced search-navigation experience
      Semaphore transforms the search-navigation experience because it gives the users lots of useful search features (e.g. faceted search, disambiguation).
   4. Route, or forward, content according to pre-set rules
      Imagine a fund manager’s in-box, stuffed with over a thousand emails and research reports. One of our clients uses Semaphore as an electronic super-secretary to scan incoming emails, and route relevant content to fund managers.