Semio to take labour out of data categorisation

Semio next week plans to launch its Semio Taxonomy, a technology designed to automatically categorise structured and unstructured data for the creation of directories on intranets and Web portals.

Users of Semio Taxonomy identify high-level concepts under which they want information to be categorised. The Semio technology then works within these defined parameters to create a structure for information pulled from across the Web and enterprise databases.

Once Semio Taxonomy creates this information directory, it works to categorise the content and present it on a searchable Web browser interface.

The technology also offers thesaurus-like links for cross-referencing functionality and performs real-time updates to the directories, according to the company.

What differentiates Semio Taxonomy from a number of other products hitting the market in the area of content categorisation for portals is that the process is truly automated, according to one analyst.

"Creating taxonomies out of document collections in an automated way, without human intervention, is a key element to the problem of delivering a corporate portal," said Hadley Reynolds, director of research at the Delphi Group, in Boston.

"There are several approaches to this type of solution and [Semio's] is among the strongest," Reynolds said.

In addition to its automation, Reynolds said another benefit of Semio Taxonomy is that it gives portal application developers the ability to direct the process of categorisation by choosing the categories themselves.

Once these initial high-level choices have been made, the creation of the directory involves no other manual labor, according to Claude Vogel, founder and chief executive officer of Semio.

Semio has already enlisted several early adopters who are currently beta testing Semio Taxonomy, including Symantec and the United States Postal Service, according to the company.

Semio Taxonomy will be made available this June in two forms -- as a Web service targeted at vertical portal and Internet commerce providers; and as an actual enterprise product for use with corporate intranets and extranets.

The Semio Taxonomy Web Services will be available for license at $US100,000 per annum and pricing for the product itself will start at $US150,000.