On generating virtual worlds from domain ontologies

Virtual Worlds are computer-hosted visual environments that create the effect of an interactive three-dimensional world in which objects have a sense of spatial and physical presence and can be manipulated by the user as such. Nowadays you need to be skilled in Virtual Reality (VR) technology to be able to develop such an environment. However, VR specialists are usually not experts in the domain for which the Virtual World need to be developed and vice versa. In this paper, we propose an approach that allows to generate a Virtual World from a domain ontology. A domain ontology describes the objects, their characteristics and their relationships that exist in the domain under consideration. In this way, a domain expert can specify the Virtual World at a high level and most of the code for the Virtual Word can be generated. We believe that such an approach can open up the use of VR to a much broader community than nowadays.

From enterprise architect to opportunity architect. The changing role of enterprise architecture in a digital transformation context

A digital transformation is felt in every fibre of the organisation. In order to deal with the challenges that come with such a transformation initiative, one-off point solutions are not enough, but a more systemic, architecture-driven approach is needed. What does digital transformation mean for the enterprise architect? Through a multiple case study approach, this research aims to gain insights into the changing role of enterprise architects in a digital transformation context, as well as to identify the new challenges and opportunities arising in this regard. Today, enterprise architects are at a crossroads: the digital transformation projects in their organisations have rendered them more valuable. However, the key question is whether they will focus on enabling and support, or whether they will move one step beyond, leading the way, becoming true opportunity architects

From Enterprise Architect to Opportunity Architect: The Changing Role of Enterprise Architecture in a Digital Transformation Context

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From Enterprise Architect to opportunity architect: the changing role of enterprise architecture in a digital transformation context

A digital transformation is felt in every fibre of the organisation. In order to deal with the challenges that come with such a transformation initiative, one-off point solutions are not enough, but a more systemic, architecture-driven approach is needed. What does digital transformation mean for the enterprise architect? Through a multiple case study approach, this research aims to gain insights into the changing role of enterprise architects in a digital transformation context, as well as to identify the new challenges and opportunities arising in this regard. Today, enterprise architects are at a crossroads: the digital transformation projects in their organisations have rendered them more valuable. However, the key question is whether they will focus on enabling and support, or whether they will move one step beyond, leading the way, becoming true opportunity architects

From enterprise architect to opportunity architect: the Changing role of enterprise architecture in a digital transformation context

While digital transformation is of vital importance for companies and is clearly a boardroom concern, enterprise architects are having a hard time using their skills to digitally transform their company into a nimble, quick and agile one. The white paper “From Enterprise Architect to Opportunity Architect” outlines a number of findings from 13 case studies of companies in Belgium: there are opportunities for enterprise architects who can get to grips with and understand the customer journey

Using Ontologies to build Virtual Worlds for the Web

Today, the development of a VR application is still a long and difficult task. You need to be skilled in Virtual Reality (VR) technology to be able to develop a Virtual World. There are several technologies like VRML, Java 3D and X3D available to create 3D for the World Wide Web. To be able to develop a Virtual World for the Web, one needs to know how to use these technologies from a programmer’s perspective or how to use authoring tools supporting one of these technologies. To ease the use of VR, there is a need to have modeling tools that allow the designer to model his Virtual World much more in terms of the domain expert point of view. In this paper, a new approach called “VR-Wise ” for designing and developing Virtual Worlds, is introduced. This approach uses the domain expertise to shorten and facilitate the generation of a virtual world. To do this, our approach uses ontologies. As ontologies are describing a domain or part of a domain, the information contained in the ontologies can be used to express the Virtual World in terms of the terminology of the domain for which the Virtual World has to be generated. Therefore, the use of ontologies in our approach can be seen as a way of grasping already available knowledge. This allows a non-VR-skilled person to model his Virtual World in terms of his domain expertise. The proposed approach is in particular interesting for VR on the Web since the Virtual Worlds on the Web are usually limited to desktop VR and do not need the same level of realism and complexity as immersive or augmented VR. Furthermore, with the realization of the Semantic Web, more and more domain ontologies will become available. The proposed approach can open up the development of VR for the Internet to a much broader community