One core task in using the Web for E-Commerce applications is the search for suitable suppliers. Unfortunately, using traditional search engines like Google for discovering suitable offerings is unsatisfying. One paramount problem for E-Commerce solutions based on Semantic Web technology is the lack of high-quality ontologies for products and services, in particular such that are up-to-date. In the myOntology project, we use the infrastructure and culture of Wikis as an ontology workbench that fosters true collaborative, community-driven ontology creation and maintenance in the products and services domain, and establish a standardized framework for ontology-based products and services description for E-Commerce applications.

Web: www.myontology.org

Business Process Management focuses on managing the execution of IT-supported business operations from a business expert's process view rather than from a technical perspective. The underlying motivation for BPM is that organizations need to continuously align their running business processes, as executed within multiple heterogeneous systems, with the required processes as derived from business needs. BPM has gained significant attention in both research and industry, and a range of BPM tools are available. However, the degree of mechanization in BPM is currently very limited. The major obstacle preventing a coherent view on business processes is that the business processes are not accessible to machine reasoning. Additionally, businesses cannot query their process space by logical expressions, e.g. in order to identify activities relevant to comply with regulations.
Founded on ontologies Semantic Web technology provides scalable methods and tools for the machine-readable representation of knowledge. Semantic Web Services (SWS) make use of Semantic Web technology to support the automated discovery, substitution, composition, and execution of software components (Web Services). BPM is a natural application for Semantic Web and SWS technology, because the latter provide large-scale, standardized knowledge representation techniques for executable artefacts. Our proposal is to combine SWS and BPM, and develop one consolidated technology. Specifically, we will create horizontal ontologies which describe business processes; vertical telecommunications oriented ontologies to support domainspecific annotation for our chosen economic sector; and a suite of tools based on the results of the SEKT and DIP IPs. Together with the other SDK1 projects this will further strengthen the global leadership of EU-funded technology development.

Web: www.ip-super.org

MUSING aims at developing a new generation of Business Intelligence (BI) tools and modules founded on semantic-based knowledge and content systems. MUSING will integrate Semantic Web and Human Language technologies and combine declarative rule-based methods and statistical approaches for enhancing the technological foundations of knowledge aquisition and reasoning in BI applications. The breakthrough impact of MUSING on semantic-based BI will be measured in three streategic, vertical domains: Finance, through development and vcalidation of next generation (Basel II and beyond) semantic-based BI solutions, with particular reference to Credit Risk MAnagement; Internationalisation, through development and validation of next generation semantic-based internatiojnalisation platforms; Operational Risk Management, through development and validation of semantic-driven knowledge systems for measurement and mitigation tools, with particular reference to IT operational risks faced by IT-intensive organisations.

Products and services categorization standards (PSCS), like UNSPSC, eCl@ss, eOTD, or the RosettaNet Technical Dictionary (RNTD) form a valuable set of concepts from the product and services domain and reflect some degree of consensus. They are thus a promising foundation for the creation of products and services ontologies. Existing approaches for this task, however, do neither properly reflect the specific semantics of the respective categorization standards, nor do they sufficiently address the high versioning dynamics due to product innovation. In this project I am developing a comprehensive approach for the proper reuse of such standards in product ontologies and am working on a complete OWL Lite version of eCl@ss.

Web: www.heppnetz.de/eclassowl

Within the past five years, the Semantic Web research community has brought to maturity a comprehensive set of foundational technology components, and this both at the conceptual level and in the form of prototypes and software. This includes, among other assets, ontology engineering methodologies, standardized ontology languages, ontology engineering tools, and infrastructure like APIs, repositories, and scalable reasoners, plus a plethora of work for making the Deep Web and computational functionality in the form of Web Services accessible at a semantic level. However, in order for these research achievements to materialize into large scale corporate applications, they must be complemented by prototypes, methods, and best practices which support enterprises in the adoption of Semantic Web technology. In this project, we will develop

1. convincing showcases and proofs-of-concept that demonstrate the technical feasibility in relevant business scenarios;
2. methods to assess the costs and business value of semantic technology; in particular, such that help estimate the costs involved in the development and usage of ontologies, and to quantify the operational and strategic benefits of ontology-based systems; and
3. metrics to evaluate and compare existing ontologies, ontology engineering methodologies, and tools in terms of technical quality and organizational fit. This includes metrics to determine the usability of a particular ontology in a specific business scenario.