Gartner Strategically Adds Enterprise Taxonomy

Gartner recently published its annual report "Hype Cycle For Emerging Technologies 2016" which for the first time includes Enterprise Taxonomy and Ontology.  However, enterprise taxonomy has been placed into Gartner's Through of Disillusionment (ToD). Over-selling leads to hype which is naturally followed by the ToD after failing to deliver on exaggerated expectations.  Anyhow, in Gartner's model this is the way forward to reach success i.e. the Plateau of Productivity. Actually, Enterprise Taxonomy has never been a real hype. It was introduced by Gartner because it is gaining ground after being around for quite a while in the US market. Enterprise Taxonomy both underpins Information Infrastructures (Separate Gartner Report 2016) as well as being a "Smart machine technology that will revolutionize manufacturing and its related industries".

Enterprise taxonomy has struggled through many years without professional editing and management software.  Still, it has pushed its way into tool box of CIOs as it has proved to be extremely useful. Today, browser-based software is available to support taxonomy assets in a SaaS model. Coreon, for example, supports seamlessly the creation, management, and deployment of enterprise taxonomies. Terms in multiple languages are easily introduced into the asset. Search APIs enable the integration of the knowledge assets into all kind of applications. This matches the enterprise need to fully support the taxonomy process also on a global scale in multiple languages. Such global knowledge resource is called a Multilingual Knowledge System.

Recently Multilingual Knowledge Systems have become also synonymous with cross-border interoperability. They support one of the most important initiatives of the CEC, the Digital Single Market and underpin the future of the EU. Surely soon European companies will follow the best practice of US enterprises to structure their knowledge to best serve a multilingual market. Actually European industry could forge ahead and take the lead!