DMR: What do you actually recommend to your customers?

H.-P. Schnurr: Innovative companies that take on these technologies now will gain competitive advantage through the ­acceleration of their knowledge-based processes. Particularly in their development areas and in customer support companies should concentrate on improving their competence in web 3.0 technologies. Service oriented architectures can help to integrate the company’s existing know-how in the form of databases, ­wikis, and other structured and unstructured data sources, and thus promote the company’s knowledge base to a higher level of abstraction. In the ideal situation the decision makers in the individual areas should ensure that the application of web 3.0 technologies makes use of the application’s collaborative nature to support work processes, while those responsible for IT will concentrate on its integration into the existing IT landscape.

DMR: To close we would like to have a look at this from the perspective of a telecommunications provider: which of web 3.0’s influences on the Internet and its use are of most relevance to them?

H.-P. Schnurr: The use of the World Wide Web and web 3.0 is shifting increasingly towards mobile equipment. This makes technologies necessary which understand the user and can provide them with precise solutions. The technologies available are not yet able to do this. Equipment and networks must reflect the needs of the users and be able to react to these. Knowledge models such as ontologies allow a semantic understanding of the data which can be found in the Internet. Self-defined user profiles can be compared with information available through­out the world and enable the provision of precise answers to a customer’s precise questions – tailored to their individual needs. So, for example, a query concerning where to eat in a strange city would result in a recommendation for a gourmet restaurant specialized in seafood – because it is known that the user has a preference for quality fish dishes. Or the customer can be provided with information about an historical building as they walk past it. In telecommunications a completely new array of man-machine interactions will be created, and these could be an indication of the way ahead.

DMR: Many thanks for the interview.