Preface
This book is my personal attempt to help people understand one of the most important developments in information technology: the rise of the Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG).
I have spent most of my career helping organizations understand the strategic impact of various emerging technologies. In 2011, working with Tony Shaw at Dataversity, we created one of the first international conferences in matching business problems to the emerging market of NoSQL databases. In 2014, working with my wife, Ann Kelly, we published our book "Making Sense of NoSQL" which became one of the highest-rated books on the topic of NoSQL databases.
Our NoSQL book was the first to propose a taxonomy of database architectures that are used to guide the solution matching process. Graph databases were one of the six solutions we found that provided a unique set of value propositions. However, at the time, graph databases didn't scale well to meet the demanding requirements of the enterprise. My research into graph databases was restricted to what could be done on small projects that ran on a single computer. In rare cases, with large R&D budgets a Cray Graph Engine. But there were so many limitations I could not see the technology as being widespread.
The introduction of TigerGraph in 2017 started to change everything. Now we had a graph database that truly could gracefully scale from one to hundreds of servers to meet the demanding needs of the enterprise. TigerGraph also runs on commodity hardware and had the required security controls that would us to allow sensitive data to be loaded but not visible by everyone. This made the prospect of commercial adoption of Enterprise Knowledge Graphs viable for the first time.
If you are a specialist looking for tips about a single aspect of Enterprise Knowledge Graphs, this may not be the book for you. If you are a generalist, you have come to the right place.
My goal is to integrate knowledge from many fields: solution architecture, NoSQL, data warehousing, enterprise analytics, data discovery, visualization, database design, database modeling, graph algorithms, distributed systems, high-performance computing, hardware architecture, integrated circuit chip design, rules engines, schema matching, integration, data science, design patterns, machine learning, prediction, semantics, search, natural language processing, business glossaries, taxonomies, ontology management, systems thinking, complex adaptive systems, storytelling, biology, brain science, psychology, cognitive bias, philosophy, empiricism, sales, marketing, strategic planning, forecasting and finally, a bit of science fiction and futurism. I value a generalist approach and wholistic Systems Thinking to help us put EKGs into the context any organizations strategic direction.
What brings all these topics together? The creation and promotion of Enterprise Knowledge Graphs and how they relate to your firms overall Enterprise Knowledge Architecture strategy. If you are interested in building an Enterprise Knowledge Graph this book is for you.
At the end of many of the chapters you will see exercises on Systems Thinking that will encourage you to consider how the topics in that chapter might relate to other fields of study and other strategic directives in your organization.
I know that many of the readers many not be familiar many of these topics and each is filled with complex terms that may mean things differently to you from your worldview. So I have provided an extensive Glossary of Terms with both general definitions as well as how the concepts related to Enterprise Knowledge Graphs.
After reading this book, you will see that Enterprise Knowledge Graphs can provide not just a strong return on investments today, but they will become the foundation that companies will build their organization's "enterprise brains" in the future. Imagine opening a chatbot that knows everything about your company. All the customers, all the products, all the competitive products, all the production flows, all the employees, all the recent promotions and reorgs, all the training programs, all the documents, all the individual systems, all the reports, all the key concepts, and all the sales trends. The Enterprise Knowledge Graph is enabling all of these things today.