'We're at the edge of Web 3.0'

Investment: Semantic web applications could get built in New Brunswick based on work at the universities and the National Research Council, says Open Text executive
B1REBECCA PENTY
Telegraph-Journal

Stumble Upondel.icio.usDiggFacebookPrintEmailSpeak UpSAINT JOHN - Tom Jenkins says New Brunswick has the same opportunity with the semantic web that Waterloo, Ont. did when a local university there bet on software developed by some professors who spun it out in 1991 to create Open Text Corp. (TSX:OTC).

Enlarge Photo Kâté Braydon/Telegraph-JournalTom Jenkins, executive chairman and chief strategy officer of Waterloo-based Open Text - an enterprise software company that now employs 3,400 - spoke at the New Brunswick Innovation Forum Wednesday afternoon about the future of the World Wide Web. Just "a few million dollars" in investment in search engine software under development over a decade by the University of Waterloo helped create a firm that raked in US$785.7 million in revenue last year, he said.

Jenkins, the executive chairman and chief strategy officer of Waterloo-based Open Text - an enterprise software company that now employs 3,400 - spoke at the New Brunswick Innovation Forum Wednesday afternoon about the future of the World Wide Web.

The self-described serial entrepreneur, who got involved with Open Text three years after the company's formation, said in an interview, New Brunswick should bet on the semantic web expertise at its universities and at the National Research Council's Institute for Information Technology.

"We're going to be in Web 2.0 for many years to come but we're just at the edge of Web 3.0, which is referred to as the semantic web," Jenkins said.

The semantic web is all about helping computers find meaning in words to build connections - instead of humans having to surf the web to find what we're looking for.

The National Research Council formed the Semantic Web Lab (SemWebLab) in Fredericton in 2002 and the University of New Brunswick has several computer science professors working on semantic web technology development; Mount Allison University and Université de Moncton are also somewhat involved in the semantic web hub that is forming in the province.

"Where New Brunswick goes with that is it first of all starts to help the industries of New Brunswick apply this technology, not just the very cutting-edge of semantic but everything else that came before," Jenkins said.

Open Text uses existing semantic web tools, for example, to help the world's most prominent media organizations offer story suggestions to online readers based on what they've already read.

He said semantic web applications could get built in New Brunswick based on work at the universities and the National Research Council that would allow people to use the iPhone, iPad or BlackBerry more effectively.

"That's how software companies get formed. That's how Open Text got started," Jenkins said.

Open Text provided early web search tools for MSN and Yahoo - which launched in the mid-1990s - and calls itself "the original Google."

Today, the firm builds internal social networking sites (like Facebook) for companies.

Jenkins said one-third of all people on the web view content using Open Text technology - amounting to 500 million users - but just don't know it.

The executive, also the chairman of the Canadian Digital Media Network organized by the federal government to mould how Canada fits into the web's future, said New Brunswick could contribute by bringing forth its semantic web expertise.

That's part of why Jenkins was in New Brunswick, Wednesday.

His meetings included visits to the National Research Council, University of New Brunswick, and talks with such leaders as premier-elect David Alward and J.D. Irving, Limited president Jim Irving.

The Waterloo executive, on his first trip to the province, was also scoping out opportunities for Open Text.

"I'm here from a corporate point of view to understand what are the research opportunities, what are the investment opportunities, that sort of thing," he said, noting his firm has invested across Canada in research centres and has acquired half a dozen small companies to give them an international market channel.