--- title: "Professional Services — Forward Deployed. Inward Redeployed." description: "OpenLink Professional Services: Forward Deployed Engineers get your AI agent, knowledge graph, or data-access project to production; Inward Redeployed Engineers keep your team running it." url: urn:osdi:this dateModified: 2026-10-18T16:56:16Z language: en --- Professional Services # Your AI agents are only as good as the data they can reach. *Our engineers make sure they reach all of it.* Two programs: our Forward Deployed Engineers get you to production. Your Inward Redeployed Engineers keep you there. [Book a Scoping Call](#contact) [Contact Sales](mailto:info@openlinksw.com) Founded 1992 · ODBC · JDBC · SPARQL · SQL · Knowledge Graphs **The two-engine model.** OpenLink fields Forward Deployed Engineers into your environment to put AI agents into production against live enterprise data. In parallel, your own staff are reskilled as Inward Redeployed Engineers — so the capability stays when the engagement ends. Every enterprise now owns two problems: AI agents that demo brilliantly but fail against real corporate data, and skilled engineers whose roles the AI era is repricing by the quarter. Most firms sell you a strategy document for the first and a webinar for the second. We deploy engineers at the first problem — and redeploy yours at the second. Program One · Go-To-Market by Engineering, Not by Slideware ## 1Forward Deployed Engineering The Forward Deployed Engineer is how serious software companies now go to market: an engineer embedded at your site whose sole mandate is a working production system — not a report, not a roadmap. Palantir proved the model; the leading AI labs have adopted it. We have practiced its substance for over three decades. An OpenLink FDE engagement puts engineers on your ground who have spent their careers in the plumbing your AI agents depend on — ODBC and JDBC, SPARQL and SQL, Knowledge Graphs, and multi-model data management with Virtuoso. One deliverable, defined on day one: AI agents operating against your live data, inside your governance perimeter, in production. - **Scoped to an outcome,** not billed by the meeting. The statement of work names the production system, the data sources it federates, and the date it goes live. - **Embedded, not remote-adjacent.** Our engineers work inside your team, your tickets, your standups — friction is found where it lives. - **Loosely coupled by design.** Agents connect to enterprise Data Spaces through open standards, so nothing we build locks you to us. Program Two · Reskilling as a Named Deliverable, Not a Side Effect ## 2Inward Redeployed Engineering Your board is already asking: *what happens to our people?* The honest answer: your existing engineers are the best AI investment you own, because they hold the one thing no vendor can ship — knowledge of where your data actually lives and why it looks the way it does. The Inward Redeployed Engineer program retrains the DBAs, data engineers, and integration specialists you already employ — hands-on, on your systems, alongside our FDEs — as practitioners of AI agents, agent skills, and knowledge-graph-grounded data access. They don't attend a course about the system. They help build it, and graduate operating it. The "Why believe us" block that stood here moved to the "Why use our services?" section below (#why-us), where production's own claims now sit with it. What remains when we leave ## The deliverables, plainly listed - AI agents, skills, and MCP-accessible tools loosely coupled with data spaces (databases, knowledge bases, filesystems, and APIs), reachable through open protocols. - An enterprise Knowledge Graph and Data Spaces layer that makes your data legible to every future agent, not just the first one. - Ontology design, implementation, and deployment for use with AI Agents and existing apps — documented, validated with SHACL, and mapped to your live data. - A trained IRE cohort inside your organization, certified on the systems they helped build. - Documentation and agent skills as maintained artifacts, versioned in your repositories. - No lock-in: everything speaks ODBC, JDBC, SPARQL, SQL, GraphQL, and HTTP — standards, not proprietary tethers. SERVICE CATALOGUE. Production's four service areas (ps.openlinksw.com, section #services, "Expert Guidance for Your Data Journey"), ported as text: production writes them as static HTML too, not from a graph (website-matrix/ps/index.html, checked against the live page in production-comparison-2026-10-15/evidence/ps/dl/ps-home.html). The heading, lede, the first two intro paragraphs and the four items are production's wording. The sentence tying the areas to the two programs (.svc-note) is new copy (DRAFT, notes/ps-youid.md). The card ids are the site footer's anchors (coordinator, 2026-10-15): keep them. Service catalogue ## Expert Guidance for Your Data Journey Navigating the complexities of enterprise data access, integration, and management requires the right expertise, strategy, and technology. Our Professional Services empower organizations to harness **AI Agents** and **AI Agent Skills** loosely coupled with enterprise Data Spaces — databases, knowledge bases, filesystems, and APIs. Leveraging Multi-Model Data Management, Knowledge Graphs, Linked Data Principles, Data Products, and Intelligent Data Access Middleware, we help eliminate the technical debt caused by data silos while enabling interoperable, AI-ready systems built on open standards. ### We offer tailored solutions across four key areas ### Product Training Equip your team with expert-led training programs to maximize the value of OpenLink solutions. ### Consulting Strategic and product-specific consulting to optimize data integration, governance, and virtualization. ### Custom Solution Development Tailored solutions that ensure seamless interoperability across databases, knowledge graphs, and document collections. ### Deployment & Rollout Assistance Expert guidance to streamline implementation, integration, and enterprise-wide adoption. Each area can be engaged on its own, or as part of the two programs above: [Forward Deployed Engineers](#forward-deployed) develop, deploy and roll out the system; [Inward Redeployed Engineers](#inward-redeployed) are trained on it alongside them. Modeling-heavy programs have a home too: see [ontology and knowledge-graph modeling](#semantic-modeling). BUILT FOR YOUR ROLE. Production's persona tabs (ps.openlinksw.com, "Built for Your Role"). Production reads them from the graph https://www.openlinksw.com/DAV/data/turtle/general/professional-services.ttl by embedded SPARQL, and so does this page: each panel's headline, text and picture come from that graph at render time, through the queries below (production's own properties, run by the engine via SERVICE as the /virtuoso FAQ is, literals passed as STR() to avoid SR549). The tab strip and the two panels are static markup, because js/personas.js wires the tabs when it loads, before js/embedded-sparql.js fills templates on DOMContentLoaded: the panels must exist by then. So each panel is its own query target, keyed by its persona IRI; a persona added to the graph later needs a tab here. The persona detail pages (/ps-for-*) are 404 on production and are not linked (gap list section 5). Verified 2026-10-15: both personas return a row from the remote endpoint, and both pictures load. Personas ## Built for your role Our Professional Services are tailored for every data stakeholder. This role could not be loaded just now. Read about the [Forward Deployed Engineering](#forward-deployed) program above. This role could not be loaded just now. See our [consulting](#service-consulting) services above. headline description image imageAlt Speed up production deployment Work with expert engineers to implement, configure, and integrate OpenLink solutions across enterprise data environments—reducing friction and accelerating time to value. https://www.openlinksw.com/DAV/oplweb3/images/ps-forward-deployed-engineer-persona.png Forward Deployed Engineer: Speed up production deployment headline description image imageAlt Turn AI potential into enterprise outcomes Engage strategic consulting expertise to design, validate, and optimize AI agent and/or skills deployments, knowledge graph integrations, and data-driven AI workflows aligned with your business objectives. https://www.openlinksw.com/DAV/oplweb3/images/ps-ai-consultant-persona.png AI Consultant: Turn AI potential into enterprise outcomes Semantic modeling ## Ontology and knowledge-graph modeling An AI agent is only as dependable as the model of the data it reasons over. We design that model with you, and put it to work on the data you already hold. ### Ontology and vocabulary design Domain ontologies and controlled vocabularies in OWL, RDFS and SKOS, built to reuse established vocabularies such as schema.org before inventing terms. ### From tables to a graph Mapping relational and other sources to RDF in place with Virtuoso RDF Views, so the graph reads live data rather than a copy. ### Reasoning and validation Inference rules that make implicit facts queryable, and SHACL shape constraints that keep the data honest as it grows. ### Governed access for agents Attribute-based access control applied to the graph, so an agent sees what its user is entitled to see and nothing more. **What you receive:** a documented ontology and vocabulary with its rationale, the mappings that connect it to your sources, example queries, and a hand-over session so your own team can extend it. [Book a scoping call](#get-started) WHY USE OUR SERVICES. Production's "Why Use Our Services?" (ps.openlinksw.com #why-us, static HTML there): the standards-bodies, commercial/open-source and Linked Data paragraphs are production's wording. Its opening line ("a leading vendor ... over the past two decades") is covered by the "Founded in 1992" fact below and is not repeated. Links checked 2026-10-15: the Linked Data and Semantic Web links are production's own /c/ short links (they resolve to OpenLink's glossary entries); production's LOD presentation-collection link (virtuoso.openlinksw.com/dataspace/doc/dav/wiki/Main/VirtLinkedDataPresCollection) redirects to the vos.openlinksw.com wiki page linked here. The "Why believe us" facts block moved here from the Inward Redeployed section. Its "Engagement shape" line used to hold bracketed stand-ins (engineer count, weeks, cohort size, integration time before and after) awaiting figures; no engagement records are published, so it now states how an engagement is sized, without numbers (DRAFT, notes/ps-youid.md). The customer-snapshot line is new too (DRAFT). Why us ## Why use our services? We have extensive experience in working with both commercial and open-source organizations, in addition to standardization bodies such as the **W3C** and the **IETF**. As leading experts in the fields of [Linked Data](https://www.openlinksw.com/c/9BV663MB) and the [Semantic Web](https://www.openlinksw.com/c/9D3763QC) since their inception, we are in a unique position to pass on our knowledge and experience in the development and deployment of [Linked (Open) Data (LOD)](https://vos.openlinksw.com/owiki/wiki/VOS/VirtLinkedDataPresCollection) services to organizations seeking to bootstrap or enhance their product or service offerings using these technologies. ### Why believe us — the facts **Founded in 1992,** OpenLink Software has spent more than three decades building the data-access middleware — ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, and beyond — that enterprises use to reach data wherever it lives. **Our Virtuoso platform hosts [DBpedia](https://www.dbpedia.org/),** the knowledge graph derived from Wikipedia that helped seed the [Linked Open Data cloud](https://lod-cloud.net/) — the same web of structured knowledge today's large language models were raised on. When your AI agent needs a knowledge graph, you can hire the people who run one of the world's most-dereferenced ones. **Who runs our software:** the organizations that use OpenLink products are listed in our [Customer Snapshot](urn:osdi:sitecustomer-snapshot/). **Engagement shape:** sized to your system. How many engineers we embed, for how long, and how many of your staff train alongside them as an IRE cohort are agreed after the scoping call and written into the statement of work. [Book an Appointment](urn:osdi:sitecontact/#contact-form) BENEFITS. Production's five benefit cards (ps.openlinksw.com #benefits), from the same graph and by the same query production embeds: every subject of http://www.openlinksw.com/data/turtle/general/services-features-and-benefits.ttl whose IRI contains "general-", with its rdfs:label, rdfs:comment and picture, in IRI order. Run by the engine via SERVICE, as above; the picture property is matched with IN () rather than production's alternative path, so nothing depends on how a path is passed through SERVICE. Verified 2026-10-15: five rows, including Optimization and Performance Tuning, and Deployment and Migration Support. Benefits ## Benefits Discover the advantages of partnering with OpenLink for your data integration and management needs. The benefits could not be loaded just now. In the meantime, see the [service catalogue](#services) above. Book a 30-minute scoping call ## Bring one AI initiative that is stuck between demo and production. We will tell you — specifically, and at no charge — what is blocking it, whether an FDE engagement fits, and what an IRE cohort for your team would look like. If we are not the right fit, we will say so in the first call, not the fourth invoice. [Book an Appointment](urn:osdi:sitecontact/#contact-form) [Contact Sales](mailto:sales@openlinksw.com)