What need does PortBlue fulfill?
The need is to capture plain old human know-how, the stuff that makes someone a recognized expert in some important field of human effort, and convert that know-how into software that allows others to benefit from that know-how in a very practical, problem-solving way. Technologists often call this kind of software “expert systems”. However, expert systems have a rather checkered past. Most expert systems have been very expensive and time-consuming to build, and often did not deliver the expected value. As a result, they were either reduced to something PhDs tinkered with in exotic subject areas or, at the other end of the spectrum, were devoted to relatively mundane exercises that were not overly challenging. PortBlue’s approach to expert systems allows this powerful technology to be applied to real business problems, at a small fraction of the cost and time of traditional implementation.
