Semantic information management and e-business: towards more transparent value chains

Semantic Information Management (SIM) shows increasing promise for helping enable interoperability between organisations. SIM is being approached on a number of levels, including the underlying ontology management tools, new development methodologies and application-level initiatives. This paper presents SIM from an e-business perspective and maps out a series of ontology-based initiatives to create industry-specific data languages. Using an e-business scenario as an example, this paper discusses the shortcomings of the industry-specific approaches and shows how a broader SIM architectural approach brings us closer to the goal of seamless interoperability.