This is a re-post from a post i just published on the Dow Jones Synaptica and Taxonomy Services Team Blog- Synaptica Central. It is based on real conversations i have been having with clients that they can have access to our taxonomy and metadata management tool as a service instead of a client hosted application (something i find not may are aware although it specifically states it on the bottom of our features list).

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The way companies are using software has been shifting- and if your head hasn't been in the clouds over the last few years i am sure you have noticed the shift to SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings and more services moving to the "cloud'. From The Economist's recent 14-Page Special Report on Corporate IT titled 'Let it Rise' focused on cloud computing, Microsoft's recent Azure announcement indicating an even bigger investment to moving services to the 'cloud', the recent discussions around Tim O'Reilly's post Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing , and of course discussions about the economics of cloud computing in today's world it is evident that these models- which are not really 'new'- are here to stay.




It is a little known fact- one that i am trying hard to ensure the marketplace knows, but Synaptica is available as a hosted application with complete access to most of all the features that are available (this includes access to robust Web Services). And just like the recent buzz in the marketplace, having access to Synaptica as a 'service' is something that recently we have been getting more and more requests about.

Who has interest in a Taxonomy and Metadata Management tool as a hosted model? Well it is not for everyone who has a need for a tool like ours, but for those who are interested it really varies. For example:

• Small to Medium, Corporate libraries or Product Manager/Marketing groups who are managing various taxonomies and do not have a lot of IT resources for bringing a tool in-house but can really benefit from a centralized taxonomy management tool that can be accessed via the internet securely by their global colleagues that work on the vocabularies collaboratively


• Companies that have an urgent need for a tool but don't have the resources to bring it in-house quickly at that specific point and chose a hosted model as a first phase to get their taxonomy development and deployment done


• Companies that perhaps have an technology architecture that is based on the LAMP Stack that Synaptica at this point can not fit nicely into


• Start-ups who are building a consumer service that requires a tool to manage their controlled vocabularies (e.g. product categories, navigation taxonomy etc.) but who do not have the IT infrastructure to host an application like Synaptica (e.g. most of their stuff is already in the 'cloud')

So with our hosted model, we can provide at whatever tier a company is at- an affordable and secure way to manage an important part of their business.

And the best part? Well coming in at the low-end, with access to a Synaptica hosted annual license (with full access to all editorial and administrative features including Web Services), you can basically choose to either use one of the premier taxonomy management tools in the marketplace or if you are so inclined- you can instead choose to spruce up your office by buying a Hyacinth Macaw Parrot, or perhaps you can buy one of your employees a nice baby shower gift like this blinged out Baby Pram or even update your office outside picnic patio area with the Kalamazoo Bread Breaker Two Dual-Fuel grill - yes, it really is your choice.

In August i 'quietly' launched another blog with my colleagues - - this one an 'official' one for our Dow Jones Client Solutions Taxonomy Services and Synaptica solutions that i am responsible for as Business Development Manager in the Americas. It is called Synaptica Central and it has been pretty successful to date. It took Christine Connors and myself a while to get this blog going and many conversations internally as to who, what and why- sometimes i admit a bit frustrating but that was to be expected and all turned out well!

The thing that i however am the most proudest of is not the traffic or the response but the fact that my Dow Jones colleagues are starting to get into it (and i hope it isn't just because i ask them to!). Last week the Dow Jones Taxonomy Team was at the Enterprise Search and Taxonomy Bootcamp and we got most of the team to blog from there (and we have some that still need to be edited and published).

Here are some of the current contributors from around the world:
Christine Connors- Director of Semantic Technologies and Dow Jones and Business Champion for Synaptica- Princeton, NJ
Wendy Lim- Taxonomy Consultant Singapore -
K Biju- Taxonomy Services Manager Singapore
Julian Brierley - Global Taxonomy Specialist- London
Dan Segal- Manager Taxonomy Delivery - Princeton, NJ
Maggie Hammond- Taxonomy Consultant - Chicago, IL
Jim Sweeney- Synaptica Product Manager, Denver, CO
And of course my posts (although i spend more time doing admin stuff at this time)
And many more folks to come !

Personal blogging is one thing- but blogging as a corporate team is another game all together and i have certainly been learning how to manage across the board from a technology perspective (we are using Drupal) to a delegation perspective so all can participate with their unique voices. As I learn more about the process i will make sure to share my thoughts here as well since it has been and will continue to be a good learning experience for me on the use of Social Media within a corporate team.

Infectious Greed by Paul Kedrosky is one of my daily reads and i also follow him on twitter which i always recommend to people especially my Dow Jones Colleagues who are interested in the markets and want to get value from Twitter besides how many cups of coffee someone had (although he like all us regular twitter folk also twitts personal messages often).

Today he has some good food for thought with his 'Bring on the Data Blogs' post. He writes:

I am, however, increasingly fascinated with capturing and incorporating useful, alternative data sources from the edge. You see some of that beginning to happen via Twitter (and I'm advising an interesting company doing work here), but there are all sorts of opportunities at the confluence of unstructured data, companies like QL9 and Kirix, webcams and video analytics, and, yes, blogs. While I've long incorporated meta-data from blogs in my thinking, I want to make it more explicit. I want blogs about data, sites that reshape and repurpose data as their central purpose.

I just had this conversation the other day that we should be doing more with our web presence beyond blog posts and contextual links and 'widgets'- the topic of the conversation was putting together an unique Synaptica web presence for our community- something i have been advocating since day one in my role as Business Development Manager earlier this year. The word 'blog' was being used during the call (and there will be a blog element) so of course i turned into my usual snotty self and commented- 'well a blog would have been cool two years ago-we need to do more and while we are at it eat our own dog food'. woof woof growl growl- i say.

I love it when i find things like this that i had wish i had attended and someone managed to get on video and upload on the web. Dave Clarke Director of Global Taxonomy at Dow Jones was in Singapore this summer at a iKMS conference as a presenter and i just found these videos that Patrick Lambe at the Green Chameleon Blog posted back in September.

The best part is that i have seen Dave give this talk multiple times, but never managed myself to get it on video so I am glad these are out there because now i can always reference them. Thanks!

Patrick Lambe who posted these also just published a book on taxonomy development titled: Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisation Effectiveness that has been receiving positive reviews in the community.

To watch, i threw this up on my big monitor and watched the video while following the slide deck which was a good way to see all the slides.

Part One: Dave introduces Synaptica from Dow Jones and other Taxonomy management tools and how to use these tools to collaborate around taxonomies


Part Two: Dave take the audience through using Synaptica to create taxonomies


Part Three: Dave discusses integrating taxonomies into a business infrastructure, talks about the different systems that are typically integrated with a taxonomy management tool and the importance of using open standards (RDF, SKOS, OWL)


If you find these video's interested Patrick Lambe has other videos on his Blip.tv channel that might interest you.

April 2008-If you have found this post it was posted out of date sequence in order for me to quickly link to a written description of Synaptica a Taxonomy and Metadata Management tool that i am the Business Development Manager for at Dow Jones. At this point they are redesigning the Synaptica web presence which means that this data is not easily available for me to link to (aside from putting it on my on web server)- problem resolved temporarily and please note i might make changes here.

Synaptica is the result of over a decade of continuous research and development driven by power-users in the information management and library communities. An unparalleled set of features has evolved to meet the uncompromising demands of taxonomy and authority file experts:

• Manage glossaries, dictionaries, lexicons, taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies and name authority files
• Supports ANSI/NISO Z39.19; ISO 2788 & ISO 5964
• Simple search or power search modes
• Standard hierarchical, associative and equivalency relationships
• Customizable semantic relationship types and behavior rules
• Meta vocabulary clusters and crosswalk mapping
• Multiple categories for a single term
• Expandable hierarchies and relationships
• Approval & candidate term statuses
• Customizable data entry templates and rules
• Dynamically enforced rules-based logic
• Collaborative and compartmentalized portals
• Role-based granular permissions
• Robust scalable enterprise-class architecture
• Web Services remote data access and write control
• DBMS deployment on Oracle and SQL Server
• COM and Database APIs for systems integration
• Logical delete and restore of terms
• User ID and date-time stamping
• Online reports using report wizards
• Bulk import and validation functions
• Various export formats including, MS Word and Excel, CSV, XML; ZTHES, RDF SKOS and OWL
• Unicode UTF-8 support for non-western character sets


Web-based User Interface

The entire Synaptica application has a web-based user interface enabling access by location independent knowledge workers. A “portal” system allows project teams to access subsets of the vocabularies with user functional privileges controlled by 12 permissions levels from read-only through super-administrator. A suite of online report wizards allows users to create alphabetical and hierarchical reports as well as various export formats including CSV, XML; ZTHES, RDF SKOS and OWL


On-the-fly Customization
Another of Synaptica’s strengths is the ability to customize the system in minutes. An extensive menu of administrator’s tools, all fully accessible via the web-UI, allows users to: create new vocabulary files; define the metadata elements; create new kinds of semantic relationship types; configure rules-bases to govern semantic and taxonomic house-rules; customize display formats and perform data import functions.

Enterprise Scalability
Synaptica provides an enterprise-class solution for authority file and controlled vocabulary management. The system uses a library of COM business objects, which can be accessed through the web-application or via an API. The system supports SQL Server and Oracle databases scalable for multiple users and millions of terms and relationships. A library of stored procedures supports native database API integration.

Onsite or Remote-Hosting
Synaptica is a client-server web application that can be installed locally on a client’s intranet or extranet server. Alternatively, Dow Jones can host client systems on our secure servers, which means the client needs no special equipment. In either case, systems use password-protected accounts, so users can access all of Synaptica's features from anywhere in the world using standard personal computers and web-browsers.



Dow Jones Client Solutions Taxonomy Consulting

Dow Jones Taxonomy Services consultants help organizations to build, deploy and maintain working taxonomies tailored to their individual needs. We provide:

• proven experience at gaining senior management and inter-departmental commitment on quality benchmarks and ways of measuring return on investment,
• cost-saving approaches and tools, and advice on the benefits and disadvantages of the different approaches;
• knowledge of resource allocation and elapsed time for taxonomy projects,
• And practical assistance with taxonomy design, development and implementation best-practice advice, practical tips and "war stories" to help you avoid project pitfalls and speed up project completion

Consultants work with clients on a modular basis in the key project phases of assessment, design, delivery, adoption and maintenance. The level of service is matched to your needs and resources.

Dow Jones Taxonomy Development Services: Helping you build or customize taxonomies

Dow Jones Client Solutions (DJCS) manages one of the largest dedicated global taxonomy resource teams, providing editorial expertise across multiple industry sectors. From the creation of precisely tuned authority files to the development of large-scale taxonomies across multiple domains, including ongoing maintenance, DJCS can be your service partner for outsourced taxonomy and controlled vocabulary development.