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Andreas Blumauer Co-founder & CEO

Complementing Existing Data Offerings via Standards-basedSemantic Solutions

Semantic Web Company (SWC) is a leading provider of graph-based metadata, search, and analysis solutions. It offers support to customers in developing and implementing enterprise knowledge graphs, extracting useful knowledge from large datasets, and the integration and linking of structured and unstructured data. Besides, it also helps organizations develop strategies that support the efficient introduction and implementation of innovative graph technologies. Founded in 2004, the Semantic Web Company is the vendor of PoolParty Semantic Suite (www.poolparty.biz), which is one of the most complete and secure semantic middleware on the global market. Creating a Niche in Challenging Market SWC has been creating semantic web solutions since its inception in the early 2000s. At that time, many considered semantic technologies too advanced for everyday use, yet Semantics was confident of its future in the industry. Its vision of intricate knowledge being structured, quickly accessible, and profitable has contributed to driving it forward. At present, several Fortune 500 companies rely on its semantic information management solutions. From IT services and healthcare to financial services and

e-commerce, several industries have adopted the PoolParty Semantic Suite to extract more value from data, reduce costs, and increase efficiency.

An Insightful Leader with Audacious Spirit Andreas Blumauer has been CEO of the Semantic Web Company for the last 15 years. At SWC, he is the ‘product strategist’ behind PoolParty Semantic Suite and responsible for business development and strategic marketing. Andreas has been pioneering the Semantic Web frontier since 2001 and is author of the first comprehensive book in the Semantic Web area of expertise. He is an experienced consultant in the areas of information management, metadata management, linked data, search, analytics, machine learning, and semantic technologies. Andreas is also the author of the Knowledge Graph Cookbook, which explains how organizations can use the technology to innovate, create value, and increase revenue. He holds a Master’s degree in business studies and information technologies from the University of Vienna.

Knowledge graphs have the potential to change not just organizations but the world. They are capable of connecting data,

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Delivering Big Data Solutions to Anchor Trade Demands Semantic Web Company helps clients overcome the limitations of the usual approach to machine learning applications, who cannot understand the context in which data is embedded. To achieve that, the company helps customers build AI applications based on knowledge graphs representing knowledge and act as mediators between humans and machines. In other words, a knowledge graph follows the human way of understanding the world by linking things, ideas, and concepts. As a result, its clients can acquire more insights from their data, which leads to improved decision making, reduced costs, and increased efficiency. SWC’s technological applications include a range of services like improving search results in content management systems, automatically classifying large amounts of documents, and building recommendation engines into more complex ones such as building question answering systems. Opting for Partnerships that Augment Data Offerings Andreas affirms that Semantic technologies can be applied to different contexts, solve various business problems, and offer value-added services to customers in various but unique ways. Consequently, the company tries to team up with enterprises with specific knowledge in a given field to craft solutions that address that field’s particular challenges. As a result, it often integrates the PoolParty Semantic Suite with other software solutions (ECMS, HR-systems, search engines, data catalogs, and more) to benefit from its technology platform has to offer. One of its most recent, innovative, and successful partnerships is with data.world. Together, they shall combine data catalogs and knowledge graphs to unify unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data to make all that available as if it were one database, a semantic data fabric.

The Vitality of Disruptive Technology for Businesses According to Andreas, knowledge graphs are at the core of many of the tools that are being used in daily lives, such as voice assistants (Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant), intuitive search applications, and even online store recommenders. Internet giants and companies from other industries such as BBC, Capital One, Electronic Arts, Zalando, or Roche have

knowledge, and people so we can provide answers to small, large, and even global problems.

Andreas Blumauer

already integrated the technology. They are using knowledge graphs to harness the power of all of the data they have accumulated over the years. The technology’s central promise is to harmonize and link structured and unstructured data, resulting in higher data quality ideal for machine learning. And as a matter of fact, knowledge graphs are the ultimate linking engine for the management of enterprise data and a driver for new approaches in artificial intelligence. Fostering Effective Management Paradigm With an average growth rate of 30% per year, Andreas feels this is a challenging time for the company. To boost this figure, Semantic is working on ways to address its clients’ needs while remaining innovative to address the market’s current and future requirements. The company has managed to do that successfully by rolling out lean management processes across the organization and working hard to become even more customer-centric.

Winning Industry Approval through Accolades The company’s upward trajectory and continuous delivery of outstanding services have earned itself many admirable recognitions. From 2016 to 2020, the Semantic Web Company has been a part of KMWorld’s prestigious list of “100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management.” It has recently been added to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant of Metadata Management Solutions in the category Visionary. Further, Andreas has been nominated to the Forbes Technology Council.

Data is the Future As knowledge graphs go mainstream, SWC will continue working to help organizations benefit from their implementation. Andreas reveals that the company has also been working to offer PoolParty Semantic Suite as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) integration with large enterprise information management systems. The objective is to benefit from semantic technologies’ capabilities, such as improved search results, automatically tagging large amounts of documents with metadata from controlled vocabularies and more accurate recommendation engines.

Gerald Neves CEO

Building Custom Innovative Software Solutions with Artistry and Business Proficiency

Software development has become integral to almost every sector of the world and the developments and changes in this field have a vast impact on users and businesses. However, most businesses do not have the time, money, and resources required to hire the in-house team required to develop said software. SovTech is one such company that is creating customized software solutions that align perfectly with the client’s business requirements. SovTech is a World Class custom software development platform that offers complete software design and development innovation services to enterprises and startups. The company provides clients across all industries with the market leading Big Data Analytics, AI, Blockchain, Mobile and Cloud-based technological development solutions and services, in a manner that allows organizations to bring innovation to market faster than ever before. SovTech’s global expertise has established blue-chip clients worldwide, and the company now operates in three continents and has offices in London, Dubai, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Nairobi. The company was established with the purpose of creating custom software for VC backed startups and blue-chip clients, in an attempt to catapult their businesses into the fast-paced digital sphere. SovTech was founded in 2011 and has grown into a global competitor in the custom software development

industry. The mission of the establishment is to become the most prominent software development company in Africa. Its journey is in full motion as it has solidified roots in three continents and has the firm intention of expanding in the very near future.

A Dynamic Business Leader The company CEO, Gerald Neves, is a technologist, serial entrepreneur, and software engineer. The massive gulf between the technological happenings in the Silicon Valley and the rest of the world instigated his motive to develop custom software for businesses. ‘ ‘Gerald’s contributions to the company run firmly through every level, as his knowledge is backed by years of personal experience. He is a Director and Board member of several other fast-growing startups, the Dean of IoT at the XTech Institute, and corporate lecturer at Duke University CE.

Leading Market with Big Data Solutions SovTech’s contributions to the Big Data Analytics industry of

Big Data Analytics is such a powerful accelerator for business and technology that it will evolve from a stand-alone implementation

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South Africa include machine learning, AI, driving innovation, mobile applications, and many more. The ‘company’s use of big data creates a significant impact on the industry. Its unique approach to software development allows businesses to exploit data in a way that transforms their practices, transcends customer expectations, and encourages business scaling.

Leveraging New-Age Technologies Disruptive technologies create a large impact on today’s innovation as solutions such as AI, Machine Learning, and Automation create business operating opportunities that have never before been possible. Albeit small startups or established corporations, disruptive technologies create new, more efficient ways to do things, allowing for flexibility in adapting to fast-changing industries, creating a competitive advantage by uprooting traditional business processes.

Challenges En Route of Business Growth Gerald informs that some of the most difficult challenges faced by the company have been seen on two fronts. According to him, the first has been the never-ending journey of changing how enterprises buy and build custom software, from a top-down legacy approach to a customer-centric solution-based approach. The second is to continuously scale across more and more international offices while still ensuring the highest level of local expertise.

stream inside enterprises to table stakes as part of any process, platform, or product in the future.

Gerald Neves

Invaluable Accomplishments In 2018, SovTech was named as a finalist in the AppsAfrica Innovation Awards for the development of the application Project UBU (Universal Basic Unit). In 2017, the company was awarded the Best Education Solution for innovative entrepreneurship app created for the Awethu Project, in the MTN Business App Awards. They also placed the company third for overall Best App of the Year. In August 2020, SovTech Partnered with the Royal Family of Dubai. SovTech acknowledged the demand for efficient, effective, and promising solutions in the UAE and founded a distinct partnership, transcending hundreds of competitors. The Future Roadmap Gerald asserts that SovTech is a recognized leader in the field of software development, dedicated to customizing processes and applications for all types of businesses by technology, industry, and capability. Together with their reputable acclaim, as well as their steadfast partnerships, Gerald is optimistic about SovTech seeing itself become the world’s biggest software company from Africa.

Aiding Digital Transformation through Big Data

Data is an important factor for the success of any organization. Undoubtedly, organizations are playing high on big data. The huge amount of data that is generated and collected every day, the potential for a successful enterprise lies beyond impactful insights. As organizations are already invaded by the innovative technologies, the scope of digital transformation gets accelerated. But in order to successfully digitise an organization, implementation of useful data with proper methodology is imperative. In this article we will observe, how big data enables digital transformation.

Artificial Intelligence Technology and Big data There is no denying in the fact that artificial intelligence will be the frontier for the coming decade. With an increased customer demand, and the need to scale up operations, many organizations are already deploying artificial intelligence in their system. Moreover, as many devices are connected to each other, huge amount of data is generated. For example, Internet of Things, a subsidiary of Artificial Intelligence, connects different devices and is governed with huge amount of data. The machine learning models and deep learning models also function with large amount of data to generate dataset, thus aiding in digital transformation. The application of artificial intelligence with data analytics also assists in providing smart insights for digital transformation. Many IT organizations are leveraging big data for gaining insights to improve their operations. Moreover with the data available, the customer demands and preferences can be analyzed. As the subsidiaries of AI are already redefining the business models, the data generated helps in gaining meaningful insights about the operations with the system. It also helps in scaling up the organizational infrastructure, by identifying the pre-existing loophole. Many processes that earlier required manual handling is now automated, owing to the generation of big data. This means that the organizations can now focus on the tasks that require human skills. This is another benefit of big data in digital transformation, where the focus of organizations gets aligned with the data that is generated. Furthermore, with digital transformation, the cumbersome task of maintaining customers’ or client’s information is getting eased out. The data about client, customer, and products can be easily retrieved using artificial intelligence technology. In the sectors like banking, healthcare, and insurance the operations have improved with the collaboration of big data and AI technologies. Not only are the operations of these sectors getting scaled up, but big data is also enhancing the products and services. With the help of big data, the organizations can also visualise the sales, products and revenues of the competitor’s organization. Thus, more the big data better the success of digital transformation.

Digital Marketing with Big Data Digital marketing is one of the key areas of digital transformation which businesses are relying on. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing assists the organization in analysing customer behaviour and preferences, market the products based on the big data available and ensure maximum customer engagement. The audience is targeted based on the data of sales and revenues of particular products. The amalgamation of big data with digital marketing ensures better reach of organization to the different areas of the industry.

5G and Big Data For digital transformation to be successful, the establishment of good communication network becomes paramount. Big data will be a driving factor behind the success of 5G network, thus accelerating the process of digital transformation.

Identifying the loophole with Big Data For any organization, to transform successfully digitally, utilization of the correct data becomes imperative. To reap maximum benefits, the integration of big data into systems will help in identifying the areas, which are lacking in operations. For example, in the global supply and demand chain, the data analytics will help in identifying the flaws within operations, or the statistics of different products. This will help organizations in improvising the products if necessary and to chalk out a strategy that could rectify such loophole in the initial stage.

Cybersecurity As organizations transforms digitally, they become prone to cyber attacks and malwares, thus threatening the cybersecurity of organizations. With big data, and data analytics, the organizations can identify those areas which have an increased probability of cyberattack. This will help in scaling up the security operations and mitigating the possible cyber attack.

Conclusion While digital transformation is governed by big data, it can prove perilous to the organizations infrastructure as well. With corrupt data, the operations can be disrupted. That’s why, organizations needs to be extremely careful for using correct data for digital transformation.

Ger Finnin CEO

Delivering Advanced Visualization and Analysis from Real-Time Data

TQS Integration is a global leader in the provision of Contextualized Real-Time Data (CRTD). The company is dedicated to the capture, contextualization and delivery of data and it has become world leader in architecture and application design, engineering, system integration, project management, commissioning and 24×7 “follow the sun” support services, including remote control and command centre operations. Over the last five years, the company has invested heavily in R&D, developing groundbreaking analytics and visualization tools to provide real-time analytics capabilities to front line operators. TQS provides leading-edge industry practices and methodology, gained from varied and unique worldwide experience in all sectors, providing clients a strategic competitive advantage via advanced visualization and data analytics of real-time and historical data. Recognized as the leading data integration company globally within the Pharma and Life Sciences sectors, the company’s experiences of working in these highly regulated and compliance-driven environments provide a seamless crossover to any sector or industry and peace of mind to any client operating in a mission-critical environment. TQS has pioneered the use of data as a front-line tool and has been the first to market with AR-based analytics tools and customizable visualization tools for all levels within organizations. The company is providing organizations of all sizes the full power of data intelligence regardless of their budget based on a CAPEX or DaaS (Data as a Service subscription model). In over 20 years of providing data intelligence services, if data exists, TQS has found a way to Capture, Contextualize and Visualize it. As a company, it has NEVER failed to acquire data for a client.

A Proficient Leadership Ger Finnin, who serves as the Chief Executive Officer at TQS Integration, joined the company in 2018 as part of a planned period of growth with over 30 years’ of experience in Electrical, Mechanical engineering, and Maintenance within highly regulated environments. His skills in these areas along with the ability to build effective teams have been demonstrated by the rapid growth of TQS which has doubled in size since 2018.

Data has become the world’s most valuable currency, as it is allencompassing and demonstrated throughout history, those who learn to harness currency will

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Empowering Companies with Real-time Actionable Insights In more than 20 years, since the company was founded by Tom and Maire Quilty in County Waterford, Ireland, TQS has been dedicated to the delivery of Contextualized RealTime Data to operators and corporate users in a manner that facilitates immediate analytics, making these services available well before the current explosion of industrial data. Having over two decades of experience in delivering data intelligence services, the company was well placed to become a leader in the visualization and analytics of real-time and historical data. TQS quickly found that data teams were spending inordinate amounts of time and effort in “conditioning” or “verifying” data prior to its utilization, this led to the 80/20 problem where companies were engaging data scientists for analytics but found that they were spending 80% of their time conditioning and verifying data and only 20% on the value-added analytics. Working with OsiSoft’s PI System™, TQS is eliminating the 80% spent on checking and verifying data enabling clients to connect sensor-based data, systems, and people. The company is delivering real-time, actionable insights that empower companies to optimize and transform their business at every level and in real-time.

Driving Progress with Strong Team-Culture Leading a multinational data intelligence company which at heart is a family-owned business, brings unique challenges but huge rewards. The owners of TQS are very focused and understand that it is the team they have built that is delivering the TQS success. Ger says, “Taking the culture developed by Maire and Tom Quilty and maintaining it during rapid expansion has been a rewarding challenge and one that continues to deliver to all of our team. True analytics happens only when people are involved and it is the ability to inspire people at all levels within an organization that will be the most important factor in determining success.”

Overpowering the Primal Challenges The biggest challenge in making progress in any endeavour is sharing the vision and engaging the entire team in identifying

progress. TQS Integration has developed the tools to enable companies to extract maximum value from their data.

Ger Finnin

their part in achieving that vision. According to Ger, having been involved in a variety of industries and sectors this has been a constant – keeping people engaged, enthused and focused on the overall vision. This is doubly true now with the industry pulse-quickening, there are distractions around every corner and it is easy as an organization to lose sight of the vision and allow people to lose focus.

Focus & Empathy: Imperative for Success In Ger’s opinion, there are two vital attributes that any leader should possess- Focus and Empathy. He says, “As a leader, it is easy to lose sight of the people around you and the pressures they face but being able to remain focused on the overall goal while displaying real empathy for the challenges of the people who are delivering will ensure that your team remains at peak performance.”

Innovating Through Cross-Sector Experiences Working with a diverse range of clients allows TQS to bring their cross-sector experiences to the development of solutions for specific and complex challenges. The development of the TQS LivePoint Analytics and Visualization platform, five years ago, was a game-changer for the industry and has paved the way for many pretenders, staying ahead of the field. This means TQS is developing additional modules and plugins for the core platform and facilitating simple client customization. How does TQS stay ahead? The answer is simple, Listening! TQS doesn’t shoehorn a problem into a product, the process is simply to develop a client-focused solution to their specific challenge or problem.

Future of Analytics: Human The future of Analytics is Human! Providing people with the tools to rapidly and accurately analyze data is the future, sure thousands of simple and even difficult functions can be handled by Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning but to truly extract value from data there needs to be a human factor and making that real-time human/data connection seamless is the future.