The Internet has made it is far easier for different people in the different parts of the world to share and combine data, information, and knowledge. If the true potential of this interconnected world is to be realized it means that we need to be able to combine not just our data, but also our models, conceptualizations, and semantics.

An initiative like Sage Bionetworks might allow a doctor in China to integrate diverse molecular mega-datasets, and reuse a predictive bionetworks built by a team in United States that deploys new insights into human disease biology by a team in France. Each community (of practice) views and prioritizes parts of the world according to their own viewpoints and interests.

Similarly, within a single enterprise, the same product or data may be viewed differently by each of the marketing, engineering, manufacturing, sales and accounting departments. Making sure that these views are, if not harmonized, at least aligned so that information can be shared and used effectively entails solving interoperability. Without interoperability, information from these different departments cannot be combined or reused accurately or effectively. That leaves parts of the enterprise, including decision-makers at every level, without ready, reliable access to what the rest of the enterprise knows. Attempts to bridge such information or  knowledge gaps without explicit semantics can can also leave the enterprise weighed down by costs, inaccuracies, and latency in creating and maintaining duplicate information sources.

Semantic analysis is a fundamental, essential aspect of federation and integration. Building value by combining the views of different communities means solving interoperability, and that means negotiating the meanings or interpretations, implicit or otherwise, used by each of these groups.

The Object Modeling Group recently released a request for proposals to create a standard to address such issues. Similarly, one example within the systems engineering community is the ISO 15926 standard which aims to provide a capability to support the federation of the design (CAD), manufcature (CAM) and lifecycle management (PLM) systems in industry, business and eco-system-wide scales.