With the rise of databases and software that can perform incredible feats of analysis, companies are looking for ways to leverage the rest of their content—much of which is locked away in the equivalent of “virtual paper” by content management systems that can’t be machine read. According to Jeremy Bentley, CEO of Smartlogic, “What Smartlogic’s about is ….. unlocking the data that is in the content. And when you do that …. it’s hugely beneficial. Why? Because 80% of a company’s information is in content. And yet, the content itself is so restricted that you can’t use it for analysis, you can’t process it, you can’t automate content-based processes.”

Self-describing, addressable “facts,” according to Bentley, can be the bridge between content and its analysis. Who attended the meeting? Who signed the minutes? Who gave a dissenting opinion? All of this information is data, but it’s locked away in reports that can only be read by humans. “That’s because [Content management systems] are designed to hold on to pieces of paper, and the best they can do is find the piece of paper and then make you read it,” Bentley said. But as machine understanding of language improves, a technological confluence approaches where these content pieces can become machine-readable.

As this confluence occurs and open information becomes more prevalent, the questions enterprise can ask become almost as important as the facts themselves. As Bentley put it, a bank can’t currently ask which customers with a balance over $20,000 recently wrote a complaint letter—which can sometimes be incredibly useful information to have. Intelligent content that can be tagged, extracted, visualized, and integrated with other databases is exponentially more powerful than information sitting in a filing cabinet, physical or digital. And at the enterprise level, databases need to be prepared to process volume and ensure speed, security, and reliability. Smartlogic works on same principle to bring the power of content into the digital age.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of MarkLogic World 2015.