Channels: General Business · Business Technology · E-Business · Knowledge Management Resources: News · World · Information! · Conferences · Careers · e-Zine · Analyses · Books · Community: Join the Network! · Online Community · Sponsored Events · Executive Jobs Congratulations!! Winners of $390,000 in 'Giveaway for Success' Click to Enter!!	SEARCH [HELP]

PROCESS TO PRODUCT:
CREATING TOOLS FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

4. THE TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT

The creation of technology tools for knowledge management must necessarily be constrained by the technology environment within which it will operate. Rapid advancements in technologies must be coupled to existing, or legacy, systems to bring satisfaction for the user.

The technology environment includes hardware systems ranging from Mainframes to personal computers systems and servers on through portable devices; both those used within computing and those, such as beepers and telephones, which contribute to the information mix. Software and hardware technologies must be designed to bridge communications gaps and provide common frameworks for knowledge retrieval, storage, and sharing.

Proprietary systems can no longer operate in isolation but are interconnected to other systems with varied personalities. The Internet, and widespread us of TCP/IP has helped to provide a ìlingua francaî by which systems can be designed but is only in infancy. More and more this protocol is being used, along with the accompanying world wide web (WWW), and emerging protocols such as extensionable markup language (XML) and proposed metadata formats. From past experience designers also anticipate, as much as is possible, issues of migration, extensionality, and scalability.

Along with the specific underlying communications technologies that make up this new environment there is also a growing distribution and desegregation of systems. Both the mobility of end users and the decentralization of authority aided by technology have created a need for architectures that are heterogeneously defined. Intermediation, unless electronic, is no longer possible with the complexity of these new designs.

At a data level much work is needed as information and data sources must be translated and structured so that they can be consolidated and analyzed. The archipelago of computer languages, formats, indexing methods, all contribute to making this task difficult. Added to this are conversion issues such as Year 2000 and Eurocurrency that drain scare resources away from tasks that take organizations forward with their knowledge systems.