For Lotus, Next Generation Groupware is Knowledge Management

With groupware quickly becoming a generic term, IBM's Lotus Development Unit is seeking to redefine the space with a knowledge management architecture in the next release of Notes/Domino.

At its annual Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla., the company laid out what many described as a vague concept of a platform for knowledge management built on creating, organizing and distributing information. Lotus believes it already has the best applications for collaboration: now it is attempting to take that a step further.

"It's groupware, the next generation," said Nick Shelness, the new chief technology officer for Lotus.

But it's not only the technology that needs to evolve. Companies must evaluate their corporate culture before they even touch the technology. They must devise strategies for mining intellectual property such as research and development, marketing and design and train end-users to work in a whole new way.

Lotus readily admits that its plan is more concept then product. "We're charting a course, we don't know where this will end up," said Mike Zisman, executive vice president of strategy for Lotus. Microsoft with Site Server, Netscape with Compass Server and a host of smaller vendors also are charting the same course.

While Lotus is just starting to articulate its message, it comes as no surprise that some Notes customers are already proving the concept.

Price Waterhouse, the first ever major Notes customer, is recognized as having one of the most ma ture knowledge management systems in the world. The company, which worked closely with Lotus and its Iris Associates affiliate to devise the first release of Lotus Notes, is once again helping Lotus plot its emerging knowledge management strategy.

The New York-based accounting and consulting firm has a Knowledge View Suite consisting of data repositories for IT, deliverables and presentations, according to John Walkup, a principal consultant with Price Waterhouse. The suite is part of a Knowledge View center with databases in Dallas; Moscow; London; Sydney, Australia; and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

"Each has a real time, nationally focused database for information retrieval and research," he said. "The technology enables this, but our processes make it work." Price Waterhouse has an incentive plan that encourages employees to share knowledge, not horde it.

The Price Waterhouse system is built on Notes 4.5, and includes an advanced Verity search engine, a customized navigation front-end and a custom-built Notes Explorer.

Lotus is constructing its architecture with four building blocks, Domino.Doc for document management; Learning Space, a distance learning application; research at the Lotus Institute think tank and search tools. Partners will be encouraged to build applications on top of the framework.

On step Lotus has taken is to add the ability to search across multiple Notes domains to Notes 5.0, due out late this year. Work also is being done on searching outside the Notes environment into other enterprise resources and even the Internet, allowing users to perform relevance ranking in searches.

"The key here is to take implicit knowledge and make it explicit," said Brian Bell, vice president of the emerging products group at Lotus, admitting that the actual technologies that will be used in the next release of Notes and Domino is still under consideration. Much of it could come out of IBM's own research labs as well as from third parties such as Vertity, among others.

But there are some tangibles on t he table. Lotus also is working on a product called TeamNetwork, which is similar to its TeamRoom. Where TeamRoom allows groups to collaborate, TeamNetwork allows those groups to interact with one another. Also in the works is Expert Network, an application that catalogs company experts and mines their data, and tools for case-based reasoning and data categorization.

Notes administrators at Lotusphere, which concluded this week, reacted favorably to the new strategy because many are already doing similar tasks.

"I can see this is going on in my company right now, we just don't call it knowledge management," said Christopher Feulner, manager of computer operation at Investment Advisers, Inc. Minneapolis. "But so much depends on putting in lots of information that is not Notes."

"We've been doing this for a number of years, but we called it lessons learned," said Don Bowen, corporate information services manager for a large heavy equipment manufacturer in the Midwest. "But we found you can't do knowledge management unless you bite the bullet and create an organization for it."

And Lotus seems poised to help do just that.

"Collaboration is the DNA of knowledge management," said Jeff Papows, president and CEO of Lotus. "We plan to bring knowledge management to life. It's a progression for our customers, not a leap of faith."

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