Big Unstructured Data and Taxonomy

Big Data.

Big Unstructured Data.

Big Unstructured Data Taxonomy?

Big Data seems to be the latest hot industry buzzword making its way through the technology world.   What does it really mean and how do taxonomies come into play to help manage Big Data (or Big Unstructured Data - BUD).

Content is being created at an unbelievable rate today.  A recent Independent Oracle Users Group study reported that one third of companies see annual data growth over 25% and nearly 10% of companies have more than a petabye (1000 Tereabytes) of data.   Big Data.

How does taxonomy fit in? 

Businesses need to evaluate strategies for organizing and understanding the huge amount of content that is created in their organization. If content is not organized in a way that you can get information out of it, then all it is doing is increasing your storage costs and bogging down your database.  A taxonomy is  a necessary ingredient to the solution.

A taxonomy model should be created for any business concerned about content overload so that existing and new incoming content can be appropriately tagged - not just for findability, but for workflows, data governance, records, and analytics.  Decisions can and must be informed by the data that is created and an appropriately deployed taxonomy is a way to help business users get at the actual information that is hiding in your Big Unstructured Data. 

To me, Big Data as a buzzword is still a loose concept.  A lot of people are talking about it, but most companies are just beginning to think about how to approach it.   As things tighten up and crystallize, I expect taxonomy to get more and more attention. And, WAND will be paying close attention and an active participant to help our customers solve these challenges.

WAND Partners with Nintex to add automatic tagging to workflows

We'll be issuing a press release in the next few weeks, but I wanted to take some time on this blog to talk about a new partnership between WAND and Nintex.  The WAND DataFacet Automatic Tagging Engine has been integrated with Nintex Workflow 2010;  users can now access a DataFacet custom action and insert an automatic tagging step into the workflow.  Conditional actions within the workflow can be based upon the tags that are applied to a document.  It's easy to use with the drag and drop workflow design interface that Nintex provides.

It's an exciting integration because it helps Nintex users further automate business process and gives greater control over this automation based upon tags applied using the WAND DataFacet Tagging Engine.   This integration brings taxonomies, managed metadata, and the term store into workflows in a serious way.  For example:

• Automatically tag documents metadata to rout them to the appropriate person for approval, based on department, project, or any other metadata tags.
• Help usher documents through a retention and archival process based upon tags identifying what the document is.
• Apply metadata to all documents in a workflow to improve findability later.

WAND is pleased to be partnering with Nintex, who is an undisputed leader in the SharePoint ecosystem.  For Nintex, this integration gives their 3,000+ customers an additional tool that makes Nintex even more valuable.

Google Knowledge Graph, Taxonomies, and you.

Google has just released a new search experience for their end users called the Google Knowledge Graph. Knowledge Graph takes advantage of relationships between entities that it has deduced (either explicitly with a taxonomy or benefiting from its large volume of search history and click behavior) to present more relevant search results to users. So, a search for Leonardo Da Vinci will return a right hand panel with links to works by Da Vinci, birth/death date, Wikipedia description etc. The idea is to get you to an answer more quickly. A search for the Denver Broncos will surface information about the roster, head coach, mascot, etc.

In my initial surface testing, it works well for proper nouns (city names, people, teams, movies, books) but for searches like "Taxonomy" there are no Knowledge Graph results, just the normal search listings. I'm sure this will get more robust over time

The main value seems to be that Google is pulling relevant information about a topic that somebody has searched for and making it explicit to the end user as well as providing some additional search result filters or other suggested searches.

This is relevant to enterprise search because Google is setting the bar for how people expect their search experience to operate. I've spoken to many information architects who are trying to provide their users with an easy to use Google style search, because that is what the users are asking for. What users don't often realize is that a google style search doesn't necessarily work very well inside the enterprise; the concept of using links to establish relevance of a website doesn't work to establish relevance of a document because documents are not linked together. However, the concept of tagging documents with relevant business metadata and surfacing those tags as refinement and browsing options to enhance a keyword style search works very well inside of an enterprise. This is where taxonomy comes in.

Google Knowledge Graph is going to train users to expect the type of enterprise search experience that only a good, relevant taxonomy and tagging strategy can make possible. Whereas Google Knowledge Graph is using a robust ontology of all topics to surface such information, an enterprise just needs a good taxonomy (or taxonomies) of topics important to their business. It's a very achievable task (particularly if you have a good taxonomy to start with).

Google has just helped educate the masses - taxonomy is about to get big.

WAND helping Information Builders analyze consumer sentiment.

We are proud to have our technology as a key component to Information Builders' WebFocus Magnify consumer sentiment analysis capabilities:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/information-builders-adds-sophisticated-sentiment-analysis-capabilities-to-its-strategic-business-intelligence-platform-2012-04-17

WAND Building and Construction Management Taxonomy



WAND has always had a Building and Construction Taxonomy that covered equipment, supplies, and services. But, managing construction involves much more than just equipment and services.

Today, we are proud to announce that we are releasing a comprehensive WAND Building and Construction Management Taxonomy that goes beyond equipment and supplies and covers construction documents, construction management, heath and safety, project types, compliance, financing, planning, and more. 

This taxonomy is designed specifically to tag and organize all types of documents associated with a construction project and is ideal for any construction management organization. 




All in all, the new WAND Building and Construction Taxonomy has over 3,200 terms and over 700 synonyms.

The WAND Building and Construction Management Taxonomy can be used to enhance any document management or workflow project and integrates into SharePoint 2010, Oracle WebCenter, Documentum, MarkLogic, SAS, and with the WAND DataFacet Automatic Tagging Engine.

Free General Business Taxonomy for SharePoint 2010

Do you have a SharePoint 2010 project and wondering how to get started with managed metadata?

WAND, as announced in March 2011 on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog, provides a free general business taxonomy for users of SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint Online.  Download it here and instantly get started with taxonomy content in your term store to begin to tag documents today:

http://www.datafacet.com/signup.aspx?feat=GBT_SP2010

The General Business Taxonomy covers human resources, IT, Legal, Accounting and Finance, and sales and marketing.   It is designed to provide high level terminology of each of these areas that is ready to be customized with terms specific to your organization.  Thousands of companies have downloaded this taxonomy to help launch a managed metadata and tagging initiative in SharePoint 2010.

If you're looking for taxonomies on other topics, WAND has a selection of other taxonomies available for license covering most major industry segments as well taxonomies that any business can use such as records retention and project management. A list of taxonomies available is at:

http://blog.wandinc.com/p/sharepoint-2010-taxonomies-from-wand.html

WAND is going back to school: Announcing the WAND Higher Education Taxonomy

WAND Higher Education Taxonomy

I'm pleased to announce another new addition to our taxonomy library designed specifically for the higher education market.  The WAND Higher Education Taxonomy has 959 categories and 233 synonyms covering topics of importance to a college or university.  The taxonomy covers academics, university administration, admissions, athletics, campus transportation, facilities, student services, faculty relations, and more.     This taxonomy can jump start a taxonomy or metadata initiative for a college or university.

WAND Higher Education Taxonomy

Institutes of higher education are complex organizations with a lot of functions outside of simply academics.  The WAND Higher Education Taxonomy reflects this complexity and is ideally suited as a metadata model for unstructured information at a university.   Using a pre-built taxonomy can save a huge amount of time and frustration versus building one from scratch.

Find out why you should not start a document management initiative without a taxonomy

If you are a college or university with a SharePoint 2010 project, you should definitely look at this taxonomy to populate the term store and get going on tagging documents.  And, this taxonomy can add value to any software application which supports taxonomy.

The WAND Higher Education Taxonomy is also ideal for use with the DataFacet Automatic Tagging Engine which can automatically add the metadata values from this taxonomy to your documents.

Contact WAND if you'd like to see a demo of this taxonomy at mleher at wandinc.com