Business Intelligence
It is becoming evident that the rapid increase of complexity is the problem of the 21-st century. The consequences of high complexity are multi-faceted. It is intuitively obvious that highly complex processes or organizations are intrinsically difficult to manage. Clearly, difficulty in management immediately leads to higher risk exposure. This is especially true for systems that are critically complex. At critical complexity, any system, process or organization becomes fragile and ultimately vulnerable and difficult to grow. But since risk exposure is proportional to vulnerability, it is clear why complexity management establishes a radically innovative way of looking at risk.
The technology established by Ontonix not only makes holistic risk management possible, it also opens new perspectives for Business Intelligence, Corporate Performance Monitoring or Design.
Measuring the complexity of a process or organization, together with the corresponding critical complexity, is a sine-qua-non condition for sustainable development. A well-managed system always stays at a safe distance from criticality. But to put this simple and intuitive logic into practice requires a fundamental component - a comprehensive complexity metric. We do have such a metric. While science still struggles with its definition, we measure complexity to establish holistic health and risk ratings of corporations, organizations, traffic systems, hospital patients or advanced engineering systems.
But what is the business value behind the management of complexity? Our unique Complexity Online Service helps our customers address the following fundamental issues:
- How complex is the business process?
- Is the complexity of the process increasing? If so, can we stop it?
- Is the business process fragile? If so, how fragile?
- Where is the fragility concentrated?
- If the business process can fail, where are the most likely points of failure?
- What is the maximum complexity that the process can sustain without becoming vulnerable?
- How does the complexity of the process affect its manageability?
- How can the business process be streamlined?
Our goal is to apply our technology in as wide a range of applications as possible, and to help our customers actively manage their own complexity.
Our vision is that less complex corporations and organizations collectively contribute to a less fragile and therefore sustainable society.
OntoSpace™ is Ontonix`s flagship product. It is an advanced tool for the analysis of complex systems, of their structure and behavioral patterns. It is very easy to use and does not require particular mathematical training or knowledge of statistics. OntoSpace™ can work with:
OntoSpace™ generates intuitive cognitive maps which link together rules and illustrate the possible states in which the system may find itself functioning.
There is virtually no limitation as to where OntoSpace™ may be used. Good examples are:
But what kind of questions can OntoSpace™ answer? Ontonix`s OntoSpace™ can help all those who:
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Face complex problems and complex decisions, involving uncertainty or uncertain environments
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Need to manage risk and liability (warranty, re-calls or law-suits)
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Want to determine where the fragility (vulnerability) of a system is concentrated
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Want to extract knowledge out of massive amounts of data
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Need to monitor complex systems or plants
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Need to monitor and manage intricate time-domain scenarios (battlefield, economy, ecosystem, society, power grids, air traffic, etc.)
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Want to understand how complex systems work
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Have realized that optimal solutions to problems are fragile and robust alternatives are necessary
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Run stochastic simulations and need a tool to extract knowledge from the results
OntoSpace™ allows the user to:
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Obtain a set of system modes – these represent the possible behavioral patterns the system can exhibit over the entire operational range
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Quantify the complexity of the system in each mode
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Quantify the overall system complexity and understand its structure and topology
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Quantify the robustness of the system in each mode
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Identify pathologies in the system
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Identify and analyze outliers
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Identify hubs for each mode – these are critical elements which, if lost, may cause system collapse (e.g. keystone species in an ecosystem)
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Perform what-if studies
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Assess overall system vulnerability and risk
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Understand system functioning from a holistic perspective
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Transform large amounts of data into easily manageable knowledge
The complexity and robustness measures that are computed by OntoSpace™ are unique. Both measures transcend their classical counterparts which are either too academic to be of any use, or simply confusing. An example is robustness. Very often, the amount of scatter is associated with robustness – if a quantity exhibits small scatter, it is said to be robust. Small scatter, however, is synonymous of high quality, not of high robustness. OntoSpace™ provides innovative and rational measures of both robustness and complexity and shows how these fundamental attributes of any system are intimately linked. For example, one may determine the critical elements, known as hubs. OntoSpace™ may also find cycles or loops in the modes, or determine the graph connectivity histogram, which reflects the fragility of the corresponding mode.
The power of OntoSpace™ lies in its ability to unveil often non-intuitive behavior of systems. In fact, as the complexity of a system increases, the number of modes which represent non-intuitive or pathological behavior increases rapidly. In order to rigorously anticipate and manage risk it is of paramount importance to determine this kind of behaviour before it manifests itself in reality. However, it must be remarked that complex behaviour doesn`t only originate from complex systems. In fact, many simple autonomous agents can, when combined, give rise to astonishingly complex behaviour.
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