OBELIX

The OBELIX project sets out to be the first and premier e-business ontology project in the world. OBELIX focuses on researching and providing smart scaleable integration and interoperability capabilities needed in the coming e-business stage of dynamic value constellations (DVCs), characterised by much more complex products and services, supply chains and value networks, and associated electronic market transactions. To this end, it will develop the OBELIX ontology tool suite for smart collaborative e-business.
 
The key to smarter forms of collaborative e-business lies in realizing a higher level of machine-understandable semantics in e-business data and processing systems on the Web.

Ontologies are recognised as an essential technology to achieve the Semantic Web. Ontologies provide machine-processable, meaning and content based, mechanism needed to let enterprises and application systems collaborate in a smart and scaleable way. Through its e-business ontology research, OBELIX will be the first project of its kind to explore and test semantic-web technologies and emerging standards for the benefit of smart e-business scenarios and applications.

The OBELIX tool suite consists of an ontology server providing generic facilities for editing, component brokering, ontology management, and XML/RDF/Semantic Web language import and export, plus a number of ontology-based application tool.

Expected results

• The OBELIX project will advance the state of the art by demonstrating the benefits of ontologies in relation to e-business needs including collaborative e-design, product content management, and business requirements analysis for value networks, reusable e-business model patterns.
• Develop an e-business ontology tool suite and library to support smart collaborative e-business.
• Validate through three e-business applications: e-markets for energy trading and servicing, new digital music value chains, and online design of events.
• Deliver ontology-based methods for such DVC mechanisms.
• The OBELIX open e-business ontology library & the generic ontology server will improve the Genericity/interoperability/Scalability aspects of smart collaborative e-business.
• The product content classifier & Online product configuration tool will improve the offered products and services, with the second introducing also some improvement on the production/delivery chain.
• The DVC scenario analysis tool will improve the Production/Delivery Chain, having also an important input in the Product/Service content dimension.
• The Online design of events application will demonstrate how Product/Service content can be improved with the OBELIX approach.
• The Power demand-side bidding application, on the other hand, will concentrate on demonstrating improvements on the Production/Delivery Chain dimension.
• Both the Smart-home energy e-services and the Digital music value chain will study aspects of the Product/Service content dimension and Production/Delivery Chain dimension.

Background
According to a recent report of the Butler Group, smart enterprises have to consider four cornerstones of business intelligence: (1) the availability of a wide range of relevant information resources, (2) the business context that provides the rationale and justification of these data, (3) the communities of information users playing various roles in the business process, and (4) the information filter functions that help make sense, select, and process the relevant pieces of business information out of today`s overload of systems data.
Taking ontology and semantic web technology as the OBELIX baseline, three questions arise that essentially concern the interaction between ontology technology and the other core entities of smart enterprise:

1. Showing how ontology and  semantic advances machine interpretation of Web information resources.
2. Showing how it facilitates new approaches to Web collaborative in e-business, for example scenarios for online collaborative configuration design of events and other services.
3. Showing how it enables the modelling, analysis and simulation of new value constellations, for example the economic viability of innovate value chains in delivering customised music products and associated rights handling, or in demand-side bidding at power exchange e-marketplaces.

The OBELIX project advances the state of art by developing innovative answer to these three e-business questions.

The Consortium
7 participants from 4 different countries constitute the consortium. The consortium covers a range of stakeholders able to deal with the technologies and for dissemination and exploitation purposes.

• Fundacion LABEIN, Spain
• VUA – Amsterdam Vrije Universitet, The Netherlands; see also Vuture net
• Parque Technologico de  San Sebastian, Spanin
• Ontoprise GmbH, Germany
• Sena, The Netherlands
• TrønderEnergi AS, Norway

Work Packages

• WP 1. Project management:  Obelix results software and the commercialization.
• WP 2. Project dissemination and exploitations:project results through a web site, a user group, the participation in conferences and the marking of commercial relationships.
• WP 3. Business, Application and Tools requirements: the requirements for the OBELIX tools suite from a technological point of view
• WP 4. Generic Ontology Server Development: the technical infrastructure and tools to support, use and handling of ontologies will be development.
• WP 5. DVC e-business scenario analysis and simulation: a generic e-business ontology and associated tool for networked value constellations will be development
• WP 6. Multi-product Cataloguing and Configuration: an ontology for e-configuration will be designed, a tool for the automatic classification of electronic Catalogues, and a tool for on-line collaborative configuration of products.
• WP 7. Application stream: Studies and demonstrators: the application studies and trials in three business sectors will be developed