Thanks to all of you for a great 2009! It was a pleasure working with you.
The whole ontoprise team wishes you a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous 2010.

New ontoprise Partner: Innosoft GmbH

Through partnering with the German company Innosoft GmbH, ontoprise yet again expands its broad partner network. Innosoft GmbH develops project and service management systems that rationalize operations in companies. Innosoft offers a wide range of services from design, development through to fully hosted customer service centers.

Hans-Peter Schnurr, ontoprise CEO, sees many benefits from this partnership: "With the portfolio of Innosoft GmbH, we are now able to offer our customers the option to significantly increase the operational and technical efficiency of their employees."

The software developed by Innosoft offers a range of features that can deliver accurate cost estimates, detailed schedules and effective capacity management in the service call environment. It provides an efficient tool for controlling and planning even the most complex service calls. It is planned to fully integrate SemanticGuide with this software so that the knowledge of experts (which symptoms have occurred, what actions could resolve the problem, which action was successful, etc.) can be collected and then processed by the intelligent problem diagnosis model. This ability to have a continuous flow of information through the combined solution will greatly improve the initial fix rate of a service center. The combination of Innosoft project management software with ontoprise SemanticGuide will also significantly increase the technical competence of the service employees and therefore help to improve customer satisfaction.

With more than 250 customers in the field of engineering Innosoft GmbH is one of the leading German companies for project and service management systems.

For more information about Innosoft please visit their website: www.innosoft.de/Englisch/.

Triathlon: Steffen Haak achieved an excellent 5th Place at the Ironman in Hawaii

In one of our earlier posts, we briefly introduced Steffen Haak and the fact that ontoprise were sponsoring him to take part at the Ironman in Hawaii this October. We are proud to announce that Steffen had great success in the competition: He achieved an excellent 5th place in his age group (25-29 years) which means he came 55th overall - congratulations!

For more information about Steffen Haak adventures please visit: www.ontoprise.de/en/home/news/news-en/ontoprise-supports-local-triathlet/

ontoprise is ready to offer Windows 7 benefits within OntoStudio 2.3.2

The latest version of OntoStudio, a professional modeling environment for ontologies, has earned the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo to provide users higher security, innovative user interfaces features and a better reliability.

After the Semantics for SharePoint framework passed the compatibility test from Microsoft Corp. for Windows Server 2008 the current OntoStudio 2.3.2 is now compatible with Windows 7. OntoStudio is a modeling environment for building and maintaining ontologies. It is characterized by extensive features for intuitive ontology modeling, and provides a variety of import capabilities of already existing structures, schemas and models. OntoStudio supports all W3C Semantic Web recommendations for modeling ontologies in OWL, RDF, RDFS, and SPARQL.

More information can be found on our website.

New ontoprise Partner: Innosoft GmbH

Through partnering with the German company Innosoft GmbH, ontoprise yet again expands its broad partner network. Innosoft GmbH develops project and service management systems that rationalize operations in companies. Innosoft offers a wide range of services from design, development through to fully hosted customer service centers.

Hans-Peter Schnurr, ontoprise CEO, sees many benefits from this partnership: "With the portfolio of Innosoft GmbH, we are now able to offer our customers the option to significantly increase the operational and technical efficiency of their employees."

The software developed by Innosoft offers a range of features that can deliver accurate cost estimates, detailed schedules and effective capacity management in the service call environment. It provides an efficient tool for controlling and planning even the most complex service calls. It is planned to fully integrate SemanticGuide with this software so that the knowledge of experts (which symptoms have occurred, what actions could resolve the problem, which action was successful, etc.) can be collected and then processed by the intelligent problem diagnosis model. This ability to have a continuous flow of information through the combined solution will greatly improve the initial fix rate of a service center. The combination of Innosoft project management software with ontoprise SemanticGuide will also significantly increase the technical competence of the service employees and therefore help to improve customer satisfaction.

With more than 250 customers in the field of engineering Innosoft GmbH is one of the leading German companies for project and service management systems.

For more information about Innosoft please visit their website: http://www.innosoft.de/Englisch/.

Upcoming Event: Remote Service Forum Fall 2009 (30th September to 2nd October 2009)

The Remote Service Forum offers service employees or service managers the opportunity to exchange experiences with each other. Different projects with their associated requirements, implemented solutions, and many best practices will be presented in lectures, presentations, and workshops.

The ontoprise presentation entitled "Knowledge-based monitoring, prediction and diagnosis in service” shows how condition-based monitoring can help reduce maintenance costs significantly. In this context condition-based monitoring means a continuous measurement of sensor data from different systems and an evaluation of this data with defined rules. Thus condition-based monitoring enables possible malfunctions to be recognised before their actual occurrence and corrective arrangements can then be initiated efficiently.

For more information please visit: www.remoteserviceforum.de

Le Bihan Consulting has become an ontoprise partner providing professional project management skills

Le Bihan Consulting is a leading German solution provider in the area of project and portfolio management. In April 2009, Le Bihan Consulting became an official partner of ontoprise. The success of Le Bihan is the simultaneous focus on two key areas:

• Robust methodologies: Le Bihan Consulting has introduced project management solutions, optimised processes and accompanied the introduction of new strategies in many corporations and SMEs.
• Proven implementation skills: It is not enough to be able to imagine the realisation of processes in software solutions - the aim is to control them. This requires a clear commitment to an identified toolset which means Le Bihan fully understands both the specific setup and the software vendor - a rather unusual consulting approach. However, this gives Le Bihan, a specific and comprehensive skill set to deliver the required high standard of company processes.

The huge expertise of Le Bihan offers ontoprise the possibility to improve on the existing product and solution portfolio with semantic project management solutions. Similarly, professional consulting services in the areas of project and portfolio management can now be included when delivering the conception and implementation phases of ontoprise projects. This gives our customers the benefit of cutting-edge software solutions combined with a highly professional project management expertise.

For more information about Le Bihan Consulting please visit: www.lebihan.de (German)

The Ironman World Championship in Hawaii - ontoprise is sponsoring a local triathlete

ontoprise is proud to support Steffen Haak, a triathlete from Karlsruhe, in realising his dream to participate in the Ironman World Championship on 10th of October 2009 in Hawaii.

This contest is a tremendous physical and mental challenge for the athletes. Hans-Peter Schnurr, CEO of ontoprise, himself an active amateur runner knows the exertions: "Only those who show an exceptional amount of motivation and, above all, stamina, are able to pass this enormous challenge and be successful. There are also parallels to the economic world in which you also have to pass new challenges." One reason for supporting Steffen Haak is that ontoprise is regularly attending the local running event, called Baden-Marathon with 3 teams. "Sport brings people together and supports teamwork. This is why we are keen to support very good young athletes from our region" says Hans-Peter Schnurr.

To participate in the world's most famous triathlon, athletes have to qualify at selected races. Steffen Haak managed to qualify at the Ironman Switzerland with an excellent fourth place in the 25-29 age group.

To prepare for the extreme performance required at the Ironman competition, Steffen Haak is practicing several times a week in the pool, by bike or on his feet. Because of his work, as a graduate student, he has to fit his training during the week into an extended lunch or after work for about 2-3 hours, on weekends the training sessions are even longer.

A triathlon is a race combining swimming, cycling and running - with no breaks between the various disciplines. A "normal" triathlon at the Olympics consists of 1.5km swimming, 40km cycling and 10km running. The Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Hawaii, however, covers 3.86km swimming, 180km cycling and 42.195km running. This means that the athletes are on the road for more than 8 hours. Each discipline in this race is a challenge in itself. To illustrate: the 180km cycling corresponds to an average daily Tour de France stage and 42.195km of running represents a full marathon!

Steffen Haak was born in 1982 in Friedrichshafen, southern Germany. He began his industrial engineering studies in 2002, at the University of Karlsruhe (TH), where he soon discovered a passion for triathlon. In the triathlon group at the university he gets excellent training opportunities which have supported him to become one of Germany’s top amateur triathletes in his age group. Steffen Haak is currently working at the computer science research center (Forschungszentrum Informatik, FZI) on his dissertation in the field of Information Process Engineering.

For more information about Steffen Haak please visit: www.ontoprise.de/en/home/news/news-en/ontoprise-supports-local-triathlet/

ontoprise has become a Microsoft Certified Partner

In becoming a Certified Microsoft Partner ontoprise has had recognised the level of skill and knowledge the company holds in developing, designing and consulting IT-solutions. The Microsoft seal of quality shows that the services offered by ontoprise comply with the strict international requirements for achieving the Microsoft ISV Partnership, and particularly highlights the company expertise in Semantic Web technologies.

After last year’s strategic partnership between Microsoft and ontoprise (see press release from 05.09.2008: http://www.ontoprise.de/index.php?id=342) becoming a Microsoft Certified Partner was the next logical step for ontoprise. To become a Certified ISV partner ontoprise staff have had to prove their level of expertise and selected customer installations have been evaluated in detail. Regular training ensures that our understanding about the latest developments and technologies is always up to date.

The partnership with Microsoft offers ontoprise information on the latest technologies, development tools and best practices, and also provides a comprehensive support service. ontoprise customers will see benefits in two main ways. Our semantic solutions can now be easily integrated into already existing Microsoft installations, which offers a higher level investment protection. On the other hand this partnership assures actuality, quality and continuity of our range of products and solutions.