Knowledge Management Base in it

¶ … Knowledge Management Base in it Toolbox

Summary Description

As one of the most comprehensive websites available for both it professionals and those companies looking to invest in and integrate an enterprise software system into their companies, it Toolbox and its ancillary sections offers a wealth of product, solution, process reengineering, and hands-on insights on how to gain the greatest impact from using it technologies. The balance of navigational design with depth of content makes this site specifically one of the best Knowledge Bases in this industry. The pervasive content available through the blogs, Wikis and through the Groups, combined with the white papers and industry studies make the site ideal for both it technical professionals and those Director, VP-level and CIO level acquirers of enterprise technologies intent on learning about what is new in the key areas tracked.

Overall Look and Feel and Apparent Target Audience

The overall look and feel of the site successfully positions itself across a range of highly technical technology implementers and users, up through the layers of management responsible for keeping it systems functioning and integrated together, finally to the C-level executives responsible for making it align with corporate strategies. What further underscores the ease of use as found on the site includes the use of a graphical, columnar approach to organizing navigational elements on the left pane of the window, browse options in the middle of the page by both type of content and by topic, and across the top of the page, illustrates of new posts in Blogs, Groups, Wiki, and White Papers. In short the organization of the site allows a reader to find any item of interest, anytime through this navigational structure.

What the site does and does not give you

The it Toolbox site, once gained access to by getting a free login and password, has all the necessary research categories to guide anyone looking to evaluate any dominant enterprise software category with enough research to make an informed decision. There are specifically areas of white papers, surveys, tutorials, podcasts and free downloads of documents that provide the necessary frameworks for evaluating software vendors. The site accomplishes a nice balance between these it professionals evaluating software with the audience of it professionals looking to both network and increase their own knowledge of a specific area. To this second group the site delivers Groups areas that are defined as Strategy & Planning, Vendor Selection, Technical and Functional, and Career. The Wiki, which is a community-based forum, also deliver significant content. Rounding out these selections are an Events & Webcasts section, Jobs, Industry Press, and Topic selection as well. The site has more features for both the it buyer and the it professional than virtually any other on the Internet today.

What the site does lack however more in-depth analysis, computer science-level analysis of the more fascinating technologies pervading the world of it today, including Natural Language Processing. The role of IBM and their progression on this area including their work on patents in latent semantic indexing (IBM Natural Language Processing, 2006) are not as prevalent on this site as it is on others. Correspondingly the issue of data mining from blogs which researchers including Columbus (2005) have commented on in the past is also not covered in the depth necessary to make informed decisions on if a purchasing decision is right or not with this emerging technology.

Why the site will or will not be used as part of a professional resources list

Must assuredly this site will be on many professional resource lists.

Reasons to return back to the site

There are a multitude of reasons for both the it professional and also for the members of an organization looking to invest more heavily into it-related technologies to accomplish their business objectives, and also streamline core business processes. This is one of the very best sites for each of these audiences.

What information was expected to be found and was not there as was mentioned earlier, there could have been better information on Natural Language Processing, Latent Semantic Indexing and the algorithms that Google uses for indexing and defining the structure of the Web per their own search methodologies.