[topicmapmail] ANNOUNCEMENT: Strategic Partnership empolis - Seruba

["H. Holger Rath" <holger.rath@empolis.com>]

PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

Bertelsmann empolis and Seruba GmbH Launch Strategic 
Partnership at XML-Europe in Berlin

Hamburg/Gütersloh/Kaiserslautern, 18 May 2001. Bertelsmann 
Mohn Media daughter empolis and SERUBA GmbH are combining 
and extending their knowledge-based semantic technologies by 
means of a strategic partnership. This cooperation will be 
announced on time for this year’s XML Europe in Berlin, 
Germany (21 to 25 May), where empolis GmbH acts as main 
sponsor (ICC Berlin, stand 48). The common objective is the 
integration of SERUBA’s ontology “Lexicosaurus®”, an 
intelligent search and navigation tool operating on a 
semantic level and in four different languages, into the 
empolis Knowledge Management product portfolio.

A well known problem: you are searching for a specific term 
on the Web and you can not find the document you were hoping 
to find – because it is linked to a different keyword.

The solution to this dilemma are ontologies (knowledge 
structures), the scientific term for the representation of 
relationships between different key words (topics).

SERUBA GmbH, located in Hamburg, Germany, has become known 
as specialist for the creation of knowledge structures in 
the area of modern knowledge management solutions. With its 
ontology Lexicosaurus®, SERUBA offers predefined knowledge 
structures for various different subjects, which allows for 
easy and fast navigation of web pages. In addition, the new 
XTM format is supported.

“The partnership with empolis gives us the opportunity to 
offer highly developed knowledge management products in a 
complex form in a global context and to highlight the unique 
multilingual capability as well as SERUBA’s technological 
advantage”, explains Prof. Dr. Winfried Schmitz-Esser, one 
of the managing directors of SERUBA GmbH.

The Lexicosaurus® covers subjects of general, topical 
knowledge - including terminology about computers and sports 
– in English, German, French and Spanish. The systems 
represents various different subjects as multidimensional 
knowledge network, whereby the concepts of the respective 
subjects are tied together as relationships.

As ISO-Standard 13250 Topic Maps is supported, mainly due to 
empolis’ involvement, these subjects can be defined as 
topics and its relationships can be displayed as semantic 
knowledge network. Currently, more than 50,000 topics exist 
in the four languages mentioned above, which in turn can be 
accessed via hundreds of thousands of words and phrases.

A network of 13 different semantic relationships allows for 
playful access, orientation between concepts and navigation 
between topics. Approximately 400,000 calculated paths lead 
through the topic network. 16 scientists from all over the 
world maintain and extend the network continuously. Each one 
of them masters at least three of the four languages 
supported, both verbally and in writing. According to 
Prof. Dr. Winfried Schmitz-Esser, the time needed to create 
this Knowledge Network took about 30 man years.

Integration of Lexicosaurus® into empolis products “k42” 
and “orenge” is seen by both parties as a chance to use 
synergies and to extend their knowledge-based semantic 
technologies. The knowledge server empolis k42® is a 
scalable knowledge management solution. In addition to ISO-
Standard Topic Maps, k42 also supports XML, Xlink and XTM. 
Developed in Java, k42 is platform independent and can be 
easily integrated into existing structures.

Search and online assistance technology orenge also supports 
effective knowledge management on a semantic level. orenge 
makes searching in very large amounts of data possible and 
visualises the results and their information source in a 
topic map structure. As orenge is based on XML, content-
based information retrieval becomes easy.

“The creation of knowledge models and networks requires a 
lot of time and effort for companies. Using pre-defined 
knowledge saves our customers time and money”, concludes 
Dr. Stefan Wess, Chief Technology Officer of empolis GmbH and 
Managing Director of empolis division “Knowledge Management” 
(formerly known as tec:inno).

Lexicosaurus® proves to be an ideal complement to empolis 
products “orenge” and “k42”. “With this combination we can 
offer customers a fast, semantic and multilingual search 
functionality, where they can find exactly what they are 
looking for - even in large and unstructured amounts of 
data”, says Dr. Stefan Wess.

SERUBA is a technology company with its core competency 
being knowledge acquisition and knowledge organisation. 
Heart of the technology developed by SERUBA is a semantic 
network, where over half a million individual concepts are 
connected to form subject and meaning related relationships 
in various languages. By means of this technology licenced 
users can set up a new generation of knowledge processing 
and organising systems. These are interchangeable, and can 
be used across the range of languages currently available 
(English, German, French and Spanish). SERUBA employs 25 
highly qualified people from all parts of the world, among 
them 16 multilingual scientists.

The empolis GmbH, with its headquarters in Gütersloh, unites 
leading media service providers and Software manufacturers 
within one group. This group, which is permanently 
expanding, employs at the moment 400 people. Last year the 
turnover of empolis, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann Mohn Media 
Group, amounted to more than 50 million DEM. empolis has 
meanwhile 11 locations in Germany. The company has foreign 
subsidiaries in Swindon/London, Budapest, Warsaw, Oslo and 
Boston.

The empolis division „Knowledge Management“ offers 
knowledge-based Software solutions for company-wide 
knowledge management, in particular for the area of New 
Media/Internet and Industry/Intranet. Since 1991, the 
company has developed and distributed intelligent electronic 
retrieval and consulting systems. The retrieval technology 
"orenge“ makes knowledge and know-how available exactly 
where it is the most efficient: at the direct interface 
between the company and the customer – on the Internet, 
in the Call Center or on CD-ROM.

Contact:
Hadassa Smith
International Marketing Manager
empolis Knowledge Management GmbH
Sauerwiesen 2
67661 Kaiserslautern
Germany
Phone +49 6301 606-426
www.tecinno.com
www.empolis.co.uk
mailto:hadassa.smith@empolis.com
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