The release of the Lotus Knowledge Discovery System (codenamed
Raven) brings advanced knowledge management features into the
mainstream market, providing a comprehensive tool set that can be
tailored to a wide range of applications
Raven was always going to be an important product, not only for
Lotus, but also for the knowledge management market in general. The
release version of Knowledge Discovery System shows Lotus has not
backed away from its original vision and ambition - even if that
has meant taking some hard knocks over delivery dates.
There are two key components to the system: K-Station and Discovery
Server. K-Station is the portal component, and was released in late
2000. Discovery Server (released at the end of April) provides
taxonomy generation and expertise location services.
Together, as the Knowledge Discovery System, they provide a
comprehensive knowledge management tool set that can be tailored to
a wide range of vertical and horizontal applications. This brings
into the mainstream market advanced knowledge management features
that will both benefit and challenge existing managerial and
knowledge management practices.
Taxonomy creation and management will be a new process for many
organisations that have never seriously addressed the issue of
information classification on a corporate scale. The proliferation
of intranets is forcing many companies to face up to this problem
for the first time - Discovery Server provides an automated
solution. But while the product automates much of the process, to
get the maximum benefit organisations will need administrators,
information managers or "cybrarians" who understand the challenges
of corporate information management.
The
 | | Taxonomy creation and management
will be a new process for many organisations that have never
seriously addressed the issue of information classification on a
corporate scale. | | | | | |
| | Source: Ovum | | |
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expertise location aspects of Lotus open up an exciting area of the
knowledge management market to a much wider user base. Start-ups
such as Abuzz, Orbital and Tacit Knowledge Systems have paved the
way in this area, but the entry of one of the key industry players
will be a major boost to the market. Ovum believes that expertise
management will be one of the litmus-test technologies for
knowledge management in coming years, raising significant new
management challenges in the process.
Today, few organisations have the management processes or culture
in place to match the capabilities of such technology - and their
willingness to develop those skills will be crucial to the success
of such products.
These challenges are not limited to users of Lotus's products -
they are relevant to all companies trying to provide sophisticated
knowledge management support. If we are to take knowledge
management to the next level - as a serious discipline aimed at the
effective use of intellectual capital within organisations - then
products such as Knowledge Discovery System (and yes, Microsoft's
SharePoint too) will need to become accepted components of the
corporate infrastructure, and not merely passing fads.
The background
Lotus first started talking about its
advanced knowledge management tools in 1997. Document
classification tools were originally announced as part of the R5
release of Domino - but they were then held back and rolled into a
distinct product, codenamed Raven.
Lotus has emphasised throughout this long wait that it would not
release the product until it was ready. It now has to live up to
that claim (and to heightened expectations about functionality)
when customers start to go live with projects.
Lotus says the delays were largely a result of work on usability
improvements, performance enhancements and, in particular, on the
need to assure that the taxonomy generation tools work effectively.
During Raven's long haul to actual availability, Lotus's vision for
the product has remained remarkably constant. Back in 1999, the
first mock-ups of the product focused on the theme of people,
places and things, and this has been the mantra for both the
development and marketing teams ever since.
K-Station
Lotus K-Station is a portal environment that
allows users to define and work within a variety of shared
"places". The idea is that places support the multiple roles that
each user takes on each day and as their career develops. K
-Station is a key element in what Lotus calls the move to the
"occupational-centric" desktop. It allows users to define their own
(personal or communal) places from sets of shared "portlets" that
provide access to commonly used applications and data sources.
A user can navigate (via tabs or bookmarks) from a home site, My
Place, to places for the various communities to which they belong -
for example, the senior management team, product development,
specific projects or recreational communities, such as a running
club. Some places are defined by the user - including their own
home site and any others for which they are responsible as
administrator or manager. For other places - for example,
departmental sites - they may take some, but not sole
responsibility for definition and development.
Lotus has tried to make the creation of new places a simple task,
with as much automation as possible. There is close integration
with its QuickPlace product, so existing QuickPlace spaces (for
example, for a project team) can be incorporated in part or as a
whole within a K-Station workspace.
Discovery Server
Lotus Discovery Server will appeal to
large organisations attempting to bring order to proliferating
document stores, intranet sites and dispersed teams of experts. The
Discovery Server combines categorisation, taxonomy generation and
expertise location services in one product. Unlike some other
categorisation tools, Discovery Server is very much a corporate
product. It is designed to help organisations provide a common
taxonomy of information that can bring order to a user's search for
documents and people.
At the heart of Discovery Server is the Discovery Engine, which
analyses documents and other information in order to generate a
classification model or taxonomy. What distinguishes it from most
search tools is that it can categorise the relevance of documents,
people, and of existing K-Station places.
The starting point for using Discovery Server is to create a K-Map
or corporate taxonomy. An existing taxonomy can be used as a
starting point - or Discovery Server will generate a taxonomy from
a sample set of documents. This first cut can then be refined using
the K-Map Editor - so an administrator or knowledge manager can
assign appropriate labels to categories or move documents to other
categories. Once they are happy with the model, it can be used to
categorise documents and data sources automatically.
The expertise location services in Discovery Server are
particularly important. The Discovery Engine creates a profile of a
user by drawing on various sources including:
- existing directories (either Domino or LDAP)
the quality and quantity of relevant contributions made by the user
to the corporate repository
e-mail activity
manually maintained information (such as interests, education and
employment history).
Using this information, Discovery Server identifies a user's areas
of expertise or "affinities" in so far as they relate to the
categories in the K-Map. Lotus has addressed the privacy issue,
which is always raised in relation to any user profiling by giving
users control of their own profile. A user can remove affinities or
add new ones (but their score will be set low initially); they are
notified if a new affinity is added to their profile; they can also
decide whether to provide additional information in terms of
education history, interests and so on.
The user's view of Discovery Server is driven by a normal text
search entry - but it is the results that are different from normal
search engines. Results are grouped into three types of resource -
documents, people and place. Document result sets are shown in a
familiar search results screen - including a document summarisation
option. The results of the people search identify "experts" that
have a close affinity with the topics being searched for. The
places section shows existing K-Station places that are closely
related to the search term.
The expertise search is particularly impressive when combined with
Lotus collaboration tools. So, for example, having identified an
expert on a chosen topic, you can then use the Sametime instant
messaging functions to see if the person is online and, if so,
start an immediate dialogue with them.
Some aspects of Discovery Server are disappointing, however. There
is, for example, little exploitation - from a management
perspective - of the metrics being collected on expertise and
document usage. In addition, the fact that Discovery Server has
been designed as a corporate top-down product means there is little
in the way of user customisability. For example, it would be useful
to be able to define your own personal views on the taxonomy, or
generate your own versions based on a sub-set of documents. But
these are minor faults in the first release of an impressive
product.
What next?
Not surprisingly, Lotus is looking to its
business partners to develop horizontal and vertical applications
based on the product. But there is also significant potential for
development of the core product itself. Most tantalising is the
potential for surfacing more of the data being collected by
Discovery Server as part of the classification process. For
example, the metrics collected on people and documents could be
used as the basis for a comprehensive corporate skills audit.
The team responsible for developing the IBM/Lotus e-learning
solutions is also excited about the possibilities of integrating
the formal e-learning options offered by LearningSpace, with the
informal learning that could be supported through K-Station and
Discovery Server.
Another important - if more contentious - area for future
development is to broaden the product's appeal beyond the existing
Lotus customer base, which is obviously the initial target audience
for the products. The Knowledge Discovery System is also an
important weapon in Lotus's battle with Microsoft for large
enterprise accounts. (It is notable that merger and acquisition
deals that force organisations to decide between existing Domino
and Exchange infrastructures are becoming one of the most hotly
contested parts of this market.)
Lotus has always claimed that Raven was designed to appeal beyond
customers who have already invested in a Domino infrastructure. In
theory, there is no reason why the Knowledge Discovery System has
to run in a Domino environment. Although at least one Domino server
licence is required at present, the product can already integrate
with an Exchange-based messaging infrastructure. However, to
seriously build a non-Domino customer base for the product, Lotus
will have to address a number of stumbling blocks.
It will have to reduce (or hide more effectively) the Domino bias
in the product. While optimisation for Domino/Notes is
understandable and attractive to traditional customers, it will be
a negative for other customers. The way to address this is to beef
up support for non-Domino infrastructures.
The fact that it uses a DB2 database to store catalogue and metric
data (albeit as an under-the-cover component) will also be a
negative factor for many IT shops with a religious attitude to
their chosen database supplier. However, given that non-Lotus IBM
customers are inevitably the next target audience, this may not be
a concern for the medium term.
More than any technical issues, there are the cultural barriers to
selling outside the existing Lotus market. Lotus will look to the
IBM salesforce to pitch Knowledge Discovery System into accounts
that are closed to Domino as a messaging solution. We believe this
will be a tall order for the company, but if it succeeds, Raven
really will have been the start of a revolution at Lotus.
Dr Eric Woods is research director, knowledge management, at
Ovum.
Ovum, the analyst and consulting company, is a global leader in the
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