Delivered by Sreenath Gopalakrishna, Director of Software Engineering at BT, and Dr Jim Webber, Chief Scientist at Neo4j, at Gartner Data & Analytics Summit London 2024 this presentation examines how knowledge graphs and GenAI combine in real-world solutions. BT Group has used the Neo4j Graph Database to enable impressive digital transformation programs over the last 6 years. By re-imagining their operational support systems to adopt self-serve and data lead principles they have substantially reduced the number of applications and complexity of their operations. The result has been a substantial reduction in risk and costs while improving time to value, innovation, and process automation. Future innovation plans include the exploration of uses of EKG + Generative AI.

1. Knowledge Graphs for
Critical Enterprise Systems
How knowledge graphs and GenAI combine in real-world
solutions
Sreenath Gopalakrishna
Director of Software Engineering, BT
Dr. Jim Webber
Chief Scientist, Neo4j

2. 1. Introduction to Knowledge
Graphs
2. Networks everywhere!
3. Evolution of SRIMS
4. Generative AI as a system
component
5. Competitive advantage
Agenda
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3. Knowledge Graphs are
cool.
Let me show you around
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4. It’s Not What You Know
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5. It’s Who You Know
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6. And where they are
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7. Higher Pay and More Promotions
• People Near Structural Holes
• Organizational Misfits
Network Structure
is Highly Predictive
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
“Organizational Misfits and the Origins of Brokerage in Intrafirm Networks” A. Kleinbaum
“Structural Holes and Good Ideas” R. Burt
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8. Relationships
are the strongest
predictors of behavior
But You Can’t Analyse
What You Can’t See
Christakis & Fowler
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● Most data disciplines ignore
relationships
● It’s painful to manually engineer
connected features from tabular
data
● Graphs are built on relationships,
so…
● You don’t have to guess at the
associations
● With graphs, relationships are
built in

9. Node
Represents an entity in the
graph with optional label
Relationship
Connect nodes to each other
Property
Describes a node or
relationship: e.g. name, age,
weight etc
Graph Modeling is Straightforward
MICA
ANDRE
Name: “Andre”
Born: May 29, 1970
Twitter: “@andre29”
Name: “Mica”
Born: Dec 5, 1975
CAR
Brand “Volvo”
Model: “V70”
Since:
Jan 10, 2011
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BROTHER
SISTER

10. Index-Free Adjacency: Fast, Flexible, Scalable
Relational Database
Person Person-Friend Friend
Native Graph Database
At write time
Data is .connected.
as it is stored
At read time
.Lightning-fast. retrieval of data and
relationships via pointer chasing
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11. These simple
blocks are all
you need
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Nodes&
Labels&
Relationships&
Properties

12. Knowledge Graphs Help
BT Group Deliver Digital
Transformation
Sreenath Gopalakrishna, Director of Software
Engineering BT Group

13. BT Group OSS Division: We develop the
strategies and platforms that help
modernise BT Groups’s infrastructure,
driving convergence and automation.
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BT Group |

14. The traditional network equipment deployment
approaches left a legacy of complexity and risk
• Multiple applications for each network technology
• Multiple vendors
• High maintenance costs
• Complex Application Integrations
Our challenge dimensions
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Duplication
Closed
Platforms
Siloed
Data
Complexity
BT Group |

15. Our objectives were to create a platform that addressed
these fundamental capabilities:
The Proposed Solution - SRIMS
1. Self-Service framework for our network engineering
teams
1. Accessible digital twin platform
1. Real-time single source of truth

16. Benefits of a Graph
Database Approach
• Consolidation of siloed data
• Easy to extend and adapt
• Provides a single view of customers,
inventory and fault information
• Model physical and virtual environments
• Increased efficiency and performance
• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership

17. 50,000
Product availability check
requests per day
It handles tens of thousands
of product availability checks
requests, each with strict
SLAs.
3,000
Users
With peak time concurrency
regularly passing 1500.
Significant savings per
day
Financial losses resulting
from the inability to transact
and process orders due to
product non-availability.
The business-critical nature of the project is reflected in the numbers:
What did we achieve?
5,000+
Order progress requests per
hour
SRIMS performs service
design and provisioning for
various products.
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Measurable Gains: 65% reduction in OSS Apps, reduced time
to deploy new capabilities, modernised processes and
improved innovation culture.
BT Group |

18. Future Innovations
The future is positive for SRIMS both within BT Group and in
the wider Telco Industry.
BT Group are now supplying the SRIMS platform via a partner
to other Telecom Service Providers.
We are now exploring the use of Enterprise Knowledge
Graphs + LLMs in a RAG architecture to provide intelligent
searching of information to enable faster business decisions.
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BT Group PowerPoint |

19. BT’s Asset
Knowledge Graph
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https://go.neo4j.com/rs/710-RRC-
335/images/BT_SRIMS_Whitepaper.pd
f

20. Are graphs for me?
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21. The Fastest Growing Database Category For 10 Years
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22. ISO SQL, meet ISO GQL
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23. The future is graph

24. The future is graph
Rethink what’s possible. Start building

25. Thank you for listening
Sreenath Gopalakrishna
Director of Software Engineering, BT
Dr. Jim Webber
Chief Scientist, Neo4j
Come talk to us at Neo4j Booth #324