Compared with more traditional BI tools, one of semantic technology's main benefits is that it gives subject matter experts the ability to build their own query structures without IT needing to go through the rigorous and time-consuming tasks of building and then rebuilding data warehouses and data marts. For example, "an expert in, say, compliance and regulations can build a semantic structure in two weeks, not nine months," and then change it quickly and easily, says Mills Davis, managing director at semantic research firm Project10X.

Other benefits of semantic technology -- again compared to traditional BI tools -- include the ability to perform more complex and broader queries and analysis of unstructured data, and the ability to start small with targeted queries and then grow and evolve in small increments.

On the Web, semantic technology has established a firm foothold in a growing number of niche business markets. One is e-publishing, where online news services DBpedia, Geonames, RealTravel and MetaWeb (Freebase) were early adopters. Another is the online financial information services business, where companies such as Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones have jumped on board. Some of the prominent users of Thomson Reuters' OpenCalais offering include news media organizations like CBS Interactive and its CNET unit, Slate, the Huffington Post, and e-news aggregator Moreover Technologies. Furthermore, over 9,000 online publishing sites now use OpenPublish, a package that integrates OpenCalais with Drupal, an open-source content management system.

More recently, online retailers have started deploying semantic Web platforms to help optimize product and brand placements in search engine results, and to provide consumers with richer and more efficient shopping experiences.