Knowledge management hailed as the next big thing

Knowledge management is the key to business and IT convergence, according to the author of the latest report from Ovum.

Eric Woods, said: "Although it will become central to IT strategy, knowledge management is not really an issue for IT directors alone: we need to get this message right through to the board." He warned that driving strategies from an exclusively technological angle could reverse progress and waste millions.

The emerging concept of knowledge management is hard to define, according to Woods. It spans traditional areas such as database management, datawarehousing and network structuring but extends to working practices and culture. "The management of unstructured information - knowledge of any sort - requires re-education about the willingness to share information. Technology will go alongside these efforts," said Wood.

Woods claimed vendors have yet to grasp the essence of knowledge management, despite their efforts to convey the opposite. "Beware the hype from vendors on the knowledge management bandwagon," he said. Those who have sensed the potential are big database names, Sybase, Informix and Oracle, and messaging market leaders, Microsoft and Lotus, but spearheading the activity are management consultants.

Ovum's report is based on intensive observation of organisations already getting to grips with knowledge management overhauls. According to Madan Sheina, co-author of the report, internal working practices of knowledge specialists such as Andersen Consulting and Ernst & Young can provide a glimpse of the future.