Linking data and knowledge in enterprises, research and society

The Linked Data paradigm has emerged as a powerful enabler for data and knowledge interlinking and exchange using standardised Web technologies. In this article, we discuss our vision how the Linked Data paradigm can be employed to evolve the intranets of large organisations-be it enterprises, research organisations or governmental and public administrations-into networks of internal data and knowledge. In particular for large enterprises data integration is still a key challenge. The Linked Data paradigm seems a promising approach for integrating enterprise data. Like the Web of Data, which now complements the original document-centred Web, data intranets may help to enhance and flexibilise the intranets and service-oriented architectures that exist in large organisations. Furthermore, using Linked Data gives enterprises access to 50+ billion facts from the growing Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud. As a result, a data intranet can help to bridge the gap between structured data management (in ERP, CRM or SCM systems) and semi-structured or unstructured information in documents, wikis or web portals, and make all of these sources searchable in a coherent way.