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:-
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- ‘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).
- 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. |