Factiva®, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, announced that it has acquired the business and assets of taxonomy consultancy Synapse, the Knowledge Link Corporation. The acquisition extends the reach and expertise of Factiva’s taxonomy team, creating an unsurpassed consultancy in corporate taxonomy services.
"With the market for taxonomy services rapidly growing, Factiva has experienced tremendous demand," said Simon Alterman, vice president of content for Factiva. "By bringing Synapse into Factiva’s existing taxonomy and content integration operations, we can now provide customers with a richer end-to-end taxonomy solution and offer the full combination of expertise, content and tools to match the needs of our global customer base."
Established in 2000, Factiva’s Taxonomy Services Group provides strategic advice on taxonomy development, access to pre-built taxonomies and expert assistance with content integration to a wide variety of organizations. Synapse adds deep domain expertise in industry verticals, science, technology, medicine and the arts, and its team includes more than fifty professional taxonomists, lexicographers, indexers and software developers.
Synapse co-founders and industry experts, Trish Yancey and Dave Clarke, will be joining Factiva to lead the combined organizations as co-directors of Factiva Taxonomy Services.
"Factiva and Synapse share a philosophy of total customer satisfaction. The synergies between our two organizations will enable us to grow this business to the delight of our customers around the world," said Mr. Clarke. "Factiva’s commitment to delivering customized taxonomy solutions to its global customer base is a natural fit with Synapse’s enterprise-class software, scaleable network of domain experts and industry knowledge."
Factiva has acquired the rights to Synaptica®, a suite of software solutions for building and maintaining taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies which integrates easily with leading search, categorization and document management technologies.
Factiva’s taxonomy services are available through Factiva Consulting Services and have a strong track record in providing custom and pre-built taxonomies to leading consulting, high-tech and financial services companies. Synaptica® is the preferred choice of many leading-edge information providers in the publishing industry, commerce, academia and government.
"This acquisition strengthens our offerings to customers; between Factiva and Synapse, we have nearly 30 years of taxonomy experience and no one has been doing custom taxonomy work longer or more successfully," said Mr. Alterman.
The acquisition also includes the Taxonomy Warehouse web site at www.taxonomywarehouse.com, a comprehensive directory of more than 500 taxonomies, thesauri, classification schemes and other authority files from around the world, plus information about taxonomy references, resources and events.
