Galway researchers get Û400,000 to develop 'Enterprise of Future' project

The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at NUI Galway this week announced a three-year “Enterprise of the Future” technology project, supported by Cisco.

The €400,000 project will develop new ways for the “Enterprise of the Future” to integrate information and make it easily accessible for employees.

Today, a typical company has information stored across a variety of often unconnected formats including documents, emails, instant messaging and wiki pages. DERI’s semantic search and integration technology will seek to more cleverly and usefully link information and make it accessible across the company.

Professor Stefan Decker, Director of DERI at NUI Galway, said: “This joint project shows that the leadership of Irish based research is recognised and valued by companies such as Cisco. The results originating from research projects like these could help to secure existing employment and create new jobs in Ireland by providing us with a competitive edge.

“It is one thing having information, but another challenge entirely on how to integrate that information so that is easily linked, accessible and useful,” said Mike Conroy, General Manager, Cisco R&D in Ireland.

Keith Griffin, Lead Architect, Cisco, who developed the project with DERI, said: “Cisco believes that DERI, as a world leader in semantic web research can now link enterprise social networking, social connectivity and unified communications for the benefit of companies of the future.”

Cisco’s decision to support the project follows a recent visit by Cisco’s Vice President of Research, Dave Rossetti, to Galway. DERI and Cisco proposed that new semantic web technologies could help companies make better use of the torrent of information – from email to documents – which employees have to process every day.

For the ‘Enterprise of the Future” project Cisco has made a direct and in-kind contribution to DERI’s research, with further support coming from the Irish Research Council for Science Engineering and Technology (IRCSET). The project builds on the existing ongoing Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) sponsored research projects between Cisco and DERI.

DERI is the largest applied research organisation developing the next generation of Internet technology - the Semantic Web. Founded in 2003 with CSET (Centre for Science and Engineering Technology) funding from Science Foundation Ireland it has since grown to over 120 people and has acquired significant additional research funding from sources such as the European Union Framework Programmes, Enterprise Ireland, and industrial partnerships.

For more information about DERI see www.deri.ie.