Our journey starts from the open source system Ontop, a state-of-the-art system for data integration based on Virtual Knowledge Graphs (VKG), which has been developed at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UNIBZ) for the past 10 years, and has been widely adopted in research and industrial projects. Recently, we started Ontopic S.r.l, the first spin-off of UNIBZ, whose mission is to bring the VKG technology to industry by leveraging the Ontop system. In this talk, we will share the story of Ontopic, focusing on the role of open source development in the company.

1. a Journey from Open Source Software
to the First UNIBZ Spin-off
Guohui Xiao
2019.11.15 @ SFSCon

2. This is Where
All Began

3. What did this paper tell us:
A new paradigm of
data integration using
Virtual Knowledge Graphs

4. Knowledge Graphs are
❖ an extremely flexible way to put
“knowledge” into computer
memory
❖ good for showing how data is
connected
❖ easy to combine one with the
other

5. Should everybody use them?
● Not always possible,
because there is legacy!
● Switch from existing
relational databases to a
graph database might be a
huge investment

6. Virtual Knowledge Graph
Legacy Systems
Go virtual!

7. Virtual means that
❖ Data stays in the existing system
❖ Data looks/behaves like a Knowledge Graph (at the
query time)
=>
❖ Great for Data Integration and Dataset Exploration

8. The theory of Virtual
Knowledge Graph is great!
How can we use it in
practice?

9. Ontop
❖ Developed at the Faculty of CS of unibz since 2009
❖ Probably the most advanced VKG engine
❖ Award winning publications
❖ Funded through several EU research projects
❖ Already widely adopted in research and industry projects

10. Ontop - open source
❖ In 2013, we released Ontop
under the Apache 2 license
❖ Great visibility
❖ 7000+ download in the last
year
❖ A lot of feedback
❖ Nice community

11. Next step?
❖ In 2016/17, while finishing the EU project Optique, we were asking
ourselves: How should we proceed?
❖ A fact: most of the software developed in research projects become
abandoned afterwards.

12. ❖ Some development activity is not well-suited in the university
❖ No dedicated company and no commercial support
❖ Ontop comes with very basic supporting tools
❖ The full potential of the modeling effort can not be used
It is time to create our own company!

13. ❖ As Ontop was born at unibz, it is natural to create a
company as a university spin-off
❖ However, unibz did not even have a regulation at that time.
❖ Moreover, we needed the right people to setup the
company.
It was not so easy ...

14. The Team
Diego
Calvanese
Scientific
advisor of the
board
Full professor
at unibz
Benjamin
Cogrel
Chair of the
board
CTO
Guohui Xiao
Chief scientist
Junior
professor at
unibz
Peter
Hopfgartner
CEO
Marco
Montali
Scientific
consultant
Associate
professor at
unibz

15. Ontopic - The Company
❖ Founded in April 2019
❖ Status of “startup innovativa”
❖ Incubated at NOI Techpark

17. Our mission:
Make Virtual Knowledge
Graphs the leading technology
for data integration and data
access

18. Ontop remains open source!

19. What keeps us busy at Ontopic?
❖ Project work based on Ontop
❖ Customizations of Ontop
❖ Training & education on VKG and data integration
❖ Further development of the VKG tooling system

20. An example of VKG in real use
Tourism Knowledge Graph for the Open
Data Hub
- Collaborated with NOI
- A Hackathon on this is going on
right now

21. Thank you for your
attention