Ontology Systems
Ontology Systems is the trading name of Ontology Partners Limited [1] and since 2 March 2017 has been a wholly owned subsidiary on EXFO Inc. [2] It was founded in London in 2005 by Benedict Enweani and Leo Zancani. Ontology Systems develop a real-time network and service topology platform and toolset used for service and customer assurance applications. They are also used as a source of data for active inventory systems to support visualization, troubleshooting, workflow and data alignment for NOC, SOC, and Care systems.
Using a graph-data based approach and a graph pattern matching inference/rules engine, they discover or compute most of the relationships between data stored in the CSPs NMS/EMS, billing, assurance, fulfilment, and CRM systems to construct a mapping of tags, pointers, and relationships to accurately represent a service and its underlying virtual, logical and physical resources.
Ontology grew out of the data integration issues experienced by Enweani and Zancani whilst CTO and Head of Engineering respectively at Orchestream[3] (founded by Charlie Muirhead[4]). Ontology customers include Telenor, T-Mobile, BT, Level 3 Communications, Three UK, Vodacom, MBNL,[5] Vodafone, Neotel, Internet Solutions and Telkom SA.
Products and Services
The Ontology 5 platform provides the key capabilities that underpin Ontology’s applications for communication service providers: Intelligent 360 for Network Operators and Intelligent 360 for Real-Time Inventory.
Ontology Systems offer functionality aimed at communications service providers in the form of the "Intelligent 360 for Network Operators" product, which operators use to construct a unified model of their network, the services it implements and the customers they are sold to.[6]
Under the strap-line "Know Your Network: Now", Intelligent 360 for Network Operators addresses operational challenges in the areas of network change management, network troubleshooting, customer and inventory navigation and data integrity tracking and reporting.[7]
References
- Ontology Systems Website, "Privacy and Cookie Policy". Retrieved 24 July 2014
- "EXFO Acquires Ontology Systems (press release)". EXFO. 2 March 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
- "Clever Integration: The Sherlock Holmes Way to Tease Solutions from a Fog of Misaligned Data – Interview with Benedict Enweani", Black Swan Telecom Journal, October 2012. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
- “Charlie Muirhead”, Wikipedia.org. Retrieved July 24, 2014.
- "Investment Portfolio News - MBNL selects Ontology Systems", www.celtic-house.com, Retrieved 10 July 2014
- Galbraith, Craig (18 April 2013), "Vodacom Taps Ontology for Service Assurance", Billing and OSS World. Retrieved 24 July 2014
- Baker, Dan (8 September 2014), "Paradigm Shift in OSS Software: Network Topology Views via Enterprise Search", Billing and OSS World. Retrieved 18 September 2014