Making use of knowledge sharing technologies

The purpose of this paper is to show that collaboration is a vital cog in the “wheel” of knowledge management. The exchange of knowledge between individuals and enterprises is accomplished by knowledge sharing technology, enabling tools that provide communication and knowledge capture in the form of wikis, blogs, online repositories, and instant messaging applications. In order to keep pace with the demands of the ever‐changing knowledge economy, organizations must be aware of the knowledge sharing tools that are in use today, customizing the technology to help them maintain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. This article introduces knowledge sharing products that are readily available in the commercial market. Products distributed by SalesForce.com, BMC Software, DCASoft, and Atlassian are highlighted. An evaluation of Atlassian's Confluence collaboration product is provided.

The paper lists the capabilities of product offerings by several companies, and provides an in‐depth product review of a web and database‐enabled collaboration application that is fully‐installed on a web server.

There have been several success stories in which government, commercial, and academic institutions have improved performance by using knowledge sharing technology. However, organizations must be prepared to identify technical staff and/or hire consultants who can integrate and customize knowledge sharing applications to suit the needs of their environments. These system integrators should have extensive internet development skills using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), Really Simple Syndication (RSS), database connectivity, portals, and web programming languages such as Java and Perl.

Enterprises can achieve a significant return on investment (ROI) by integrating collaborative technology into their daily operations. Benefits would be measured in terms of increased productivity, improved performance, and profitability.