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S01E02 of Novulo Explained explores how a shared ontology solves the billion-dollar translation problem in enterprise software. Fewer integrations, more reuse, and AI that truly understands your business.
Inside your organization right now, the same concept has four different names.
Your finance team calls them "contacts."
Sales calls them "customers."
Support calls them "clients."
IT calls them "records."
Same person. Four names. Infinite headaches. Now multiply that by every concept in your business…
So you hire integration specialists to make sense of the mess and to build bridges between systems that should have spoken the same language from the start.
It's like building a car where the brake pedal team and the brake system team never agreed on what "stop" means. You can make it work. But would you drive it?
Software has quietly become the most complex thing most companies own, and it's the only thing we build without a shared language.
Welcome to the billion-dollar translation problem nobody talks about.
When you build a skyscraper, every architect, engineer, supplier, and electrician works from the same digital model: BIM (Building Information Modeling). In that model, every wall, pipe, and window has a defined meaning and relationship. Adjust one element, and all connected components update across the design.
When you build a car, you don't start from scratch. Hundreds of suppliers design engines, electronics, and safety systems that snap together, because they all follow the same design language.
When Boeing builds a 787, millions of parts from hundreds of suppliers across dozens of countries fit together perfectly. The hydraulics team in Seattle and the electronics team in Tokyo never meet, but their parts align flawlessly in South Carolina.
Why? Because before anyone builds anything, there's a shared ontology: a precise, universal definition of every component and how it relates to everything else.
It's the shared dictionary that makes complexity work everywhere…
… except in enterprise software.
I know, "Ontology" sounds academic. Forget that. Here's the simplest definition you'll ever hear:
Ontology = The Shared Dictionary Behind Everything
It defines what core business concepts actually mean and how they relate to each other. Customer, Order, Policy, Product, Claim. All clear. All connected.
Once those meanings are shared, everything else just works.
Modules can connect.
Processes can align.
Data can flow.
That’s what makes composability work in practice: shared understanding.
Nobody in manufacturing starts from zero. Think about how cars are built today. Manufacturers assemble proven components: electronics from Bosch, safety systems from Continental, drivetrains from ZF, interiors from Faurecia. Each part is built by a different specialist, yet everything fits because they all design from the same shared model of how a car is built and behaves.
Novulo works the same way.
Every component (whether built by Novulo, a partner, or a customer) uses the same underlying dictionary.
That means the data model, relationships, and logic behind concepts like customer, order, or claim are already understood across the platform.
So when you compose new applications, you can pick from thousands of components, and everything just fits. They align automatically, sharing meaning, context, and data.
No translation. No rework. No brittle integrations.
That’s how Novulo turns complexity into something that scales.
Ontology isn’t an abstract layer. It’s what turns composability from a technical idea into a business advantage.
When your business and your software speak the same language, you unlock three game-changing benefits:
In most companies, every small change triggers a chain reaction. Integrations break, timelines slip, and updates become landmines.
When everything is built on the same shared language, that complexity fades. Each component understands how it connects to the rest, so updates and new features slot naturally into place.
Change stops being something to avoid and becomes something you can plan for.
Most companies solve the same problems in isolation, duplicating effort across the industry.
A shared ontology changes that.
It makes innovation something you can build together.
I see this every day in the Novulo ecosystem. Insurance companies design and ship new features daily, sometimes entire modules for pricing, underwriting, or reinsurance. Because they build within the same ontology and guardrails, each new component already understands what a policy, claim, or customer means.
That consistency means two things:
What one insurer builds, another can adapt, extend, or improve, without rework or reintegration.
So innovation shifts from vendor-driven to community-driven.
As businesses scale, their systems fracture. New markets bring new software. New teams bring new tools. Over time, scale becomes a tangle of technology holding the business back.
With ontology as your foundation, growth follows a different pattern. You evolve your composition continuously, adding or adjusting components with surgical precision.
Your applications adapt to your business instead of forcing your processes to fit the limits of standard software.
Enterprises on Novulo can keep expanding: adding new business lines, partners, or countries, without starting over.
You're not building more systems. You're evolving one living system that grows with your business.
And here’s the thing everyone’s chasing but almost nobody gets right.
Once you have a shared ontology and when everything across your business speaks the same language: AI doesn’t need to be integrated. It’s already part of the system.
It instantly understands your business: how a customer relates to a policy, how a claim triggers a workflow, how an order becomes a revenue stream.
That context is what every other platform is missing.
Without ontology, AI is guessing.
With ontology, AI is reasoning.
Every company will have AI. But only those with ontology will have AI that actually knows what their business means.
That’s not an add-on….
That’s the endgame of composability.
Next Up: S01E03 – The Store: The Missing Supply Chain in Enterprise Software
About Novulo Explained
Novulo Explained uncovers the hidden mechanics of modern enterprise software. It’s where strategy meets architecture. How ideas like composability, shared language, and AI-ready design are quietly reshaping how companies build, grow, and stay in control.
S01E03 of Novulo Explained explores how the Novulo Store turns enterprise software into a collaborative marketplace. Thousands of creators build, share, and reuse components, accelerating innovation across the ecosystem.
S01E02 of Novulo Explained explores how a shared ontology solves the billion-dollar translation problem in enterprise software. Fewer integrations, more reuse, and AI that truly understands your business.
Every organization recognizes the dilemma: buy software or build it? In this first episode of Novulo Explained, we show that there is another way.
