Unique end user semantic query tool included in a raft of new user experience features in latest semantic search product release

London, UK - 17 May, 2011: Today, Ontology Systems (www.ontology.com), the semantic search technology provider for Enterprise Data Alignment, announces a new release of its product, Ontology 3. Previously known as OSS/CAD and now in its third generation, the new release focuses on user experience by delivering significant ease of use and deployment features with user friendly tools to empower business users and out-of-the-box functionality to speed OSS/BSS deployments.   

Ontology 3 SiFi and new end user features
With Ontology 3, business end users (such as operations, planning or revenue assurance professionals) can now to construct their own relationship-based queries to semantically search across separate commercial, operational and infrastructure IT systems  without the help of IT.  This unique web-based tool, known as SiFi (Semantic Information Finder), places the power of semantic search into the hands of the business users who need to find how customers, services and network assets are actually configured in their OSS/BSS.

For example, a finance users might want to search for customers who have ceased their services but are still benefiting from connected equipment, a customer care user might want to search on behalf of a unsatisfied customer to see if their planned services match their currently deployed infrastructure, and an IT architect involved in a transformation might want to search for live customers that are still dependent on a soon-to-be-decommissioned system.

End users will also see new and improved tools to enable them to more easily access and manage data issues, exceptions, reports and dashboard views, further decreasing their dependency on IT to configure and perform semantic searches on their OSS/BSS data.

Benedict Enweani, Ontology's CEO commented:  "Over the past eighteen months we have seen a huge take up of Ontology by service providers who seek new way of stopping revenue leakages, improving service management and simply joining up and aligning data across their OSS/BSS estates."  Enweani continued: "With increasing number of deployments, we have been able to gain feedback on how our customer's IT staff, our SI partners deployment staff and the actual end users wanted to interact with Ontology.  Empowering end users to perform their own semantic searches and empowering IT to 'unwrap Ontology 3 and go', to speed deployments, were both high on the list."

Martina Kurth, Gartner stated: "I expect to see more demand for universal solutions spanning end-to-end OSS and BSS processes. CSPs must achieve more flexible management of complex, heterogeneous data."

Ontology 3 Out-of-the-box functionality for OSS/BSS deployments
As well as empowering end users, Ontology has added new capabilities to OntoScope, the web-based user interface for end user applications, which further accelerates the already rapid deployment of Ontology 3.

• Out-of-the-box unified network visualisation - IT staff will be able to examine  multi-technology networks without involving any complex set up. The feature  uses OSS data from different NMS and Discovery applications to provide a single, visualization of the network.
• Out-of-the box multi-layer topology browser - network operations and planning staff will be able to browse across network layers to accelerate investigation of planned changes and equipment failures.
• Data Uplift Assistant - The already rapid implementation of Ontology is further sped by automating much of the configuration necessary to search and classify data from common types of sources such as files, spread sheets and databases.

Leo Zancani, Ontology's CTO commented: "Having already established Ontology as a superior tool for unifying and aligning OSS/BSS data our design goal for Ontology 3 was to increase both the ease of use and raw power of the solution. We are now supporting SI partners, end users, and IT system administrators to achieve their independent goals quickly and easily.

Ontology 3 adds further momentum to the rapid adoption of the semantic search data alignment product across a wide range of service providers who see Ontology as a viable alternative to costly and inflexible OSS/BSS integrations. In many deployments, Ontology has been successful in providing an aligned and unified view of multiple different OSS/BSS data sources where previous integration attempts have failed.  

Nancee Ruzicka, Stratecast observed: "Stratecast has been tracking Ontology's progress and included them in the Stratecast Rat Pack Report - Ten to Watch for 2010. Ontology's use of semantics offers a compelling alternative to service provides trying to unify their OSS/BSS estates via traditional integration. Early results from Ontology's customers should serve as a 'heads-up' to other operators"


Ontology 3 will be made available to new and existing customers throughout 2011, and will be showcased in the upcoming TM Forum Management World conference in Dublin.