Open Source provides an alternative approach to implement Knowledge Management in ways that suit organizations. However, this requires a “Platforming” approach where the best of available open source technologies and frameworks come together to deliver the best that the open source model has to offer. We have found this approach of delivering KM solutions working effectively with large International Development Organizations, NGOs and Public Sector organizations.

1. White paper
Knowledge Management
powered by Open Source
Implement Knowledge
Management Using Open
Source “Platforming”
Implement Knowledge Management
Using Open Source “Platforming”

2. White paper
Abstract
Managing enterprise knowledge drives innovation and productivity within an enterprise. Today Knowledge Management is
considered as one of the most important initiatives that an enterprise needs to embark upon.
The confusion however remains on how to start and leverage the different products and technologies available such as CMS,
Document Management System, Enterprise Content Management products, Social Networks etc in a fashion where it is possible to
implement Knowledge Management effectively.
Open Source provides now an alternative approach to implement Knowledge Management in ways that suit your business.
However, this requires a “Platforming” approach where the best of available open source technologies and frameworks come
together to deliver the best that the open source model has to offer.
This Platforming approach using open source allows organizations to look at open source differently and understand better the
flexibility and choice available in this approach. Knowledge Management initiatives face an uphill task while defining the ROI for
stakeholders. The Platforming approach allows a open source led long term path that surely delivers results and helps pace the KM
implementation as per the speed of organizational learning around such initiatives.
www.infoaxon.com

3. White paper
Understanding KM – Its Evolution from discipline to practices with
Web 2.0
“All knowledge is
connected to all other
Knowledge Management is the name given today to a range of practices and strategies
knowledge. The real
deployed in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of
knowledge management is
insights and experiences.
in making the
connections.”
Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organizational objectives and are
intended to lead to the achievement of specific outcomes such as shared intelligence,
improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation.
During 1990’s Knowledge Management (KM) became an established discipline and organizations started adopting focused policies
and actions such as Communities of Practices, knowledge bases, and expert systems to further their KM agenda. The
technologies at the time were driven by large databases, intranet tools, and decision support systems. This approach was a top to
bottom driven via a KM strategy and often driven by the management stakeholders.
In early 2000 the focus on a bottom top approach to knowledge management began. The stress was more on the management of
knowledge at the individual level. This also led to personal knowledge management practices with focus on information
categorization, collaboration, taxonomies, terms classifications, and most importantly people to people networking.
Thus began the most exciting evolution phase of Knowledge Management with focus on the individual and creating an environment
with the right technology, practices, and strategies. This phase was more aimed at an individual level and lead to a highly
participatory approach from individuals and organizations alike to deliver knowledge insights.
Explicit & Implicit Knowledge
Knowledge Management today is understood as Explicit and Implicit
knowledge.
More recently with the advent of
Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been or can be articulated, the Web 2.0, the concept of
codified, and stored in certain media. The most common forms of explicit Knowledge Management has
knowledge are manuals, documents, procedures, and stories. Thus any evolved towards a vision more
externalized knowledge can now be stored in databases, content management based on people participation and
systems, document management systems, Intranets and knowledge emergence. It is becoming clear
repositories. now that whatever the future of
Knowledge Management tomorrow
Implicit Knowledge is knowledge that people carry in their heads.
Web 2.0 technologies and practices
Compared with explicit knowledge, implicit knowledge is more difficult to
articulate or write down and so it tends to be shared between people through will have a central role to play.
discussion, stories and personal interactions. It includes skills, experiences,
insight, intuition and judgment.
www.infoaxon.com

4. White paper
Web 2.0 and Social Web Accelerate Implicit & Explicit Knowledge
Management
In the last few years Enterprise social network with Web 2.0 tools have greatly accelerated Knowledge Management for both the
categories (explicit or implicit). Moreover, trends such as open source have resulted in a significant increase in the number of open
source tools and technologies available today to assist in management of both explicit and implicit knowledge management.
Figure 1 Understanding Knowledge Management Map with Web 2.0 Technologies
Reference from : http://scientometrics.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/open-source-knowledge-management-tools/ (TEN Competence- European Network
Study extract)
As shown in the diagram above explicit knowledge management tools already exist in the form of several Web 2.0 technologies
such as Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Discussion Groups, Mailing Lists, Document Management and File Servers. Most of this content is
searchable to quickly dig into the knowledge. Insights are possible through Semantic search into the content.
Implicit information can now be managed through setup of Best practices implemented by creation of virtual online communities
providing community collaboration applications. On top of the communities the Social Networks capture implicit knowledge directly
from individuals participating within the social network.E-Learning management systems can also be integrated into the social
network with information flow providing allows access to learning resources.
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5. White paper
Use of Knowledge Maps
Knowledge Maps are visual representation of knowledge. It is similar to a virtual directory that Taxonomy is a practice
points people participating within the community towards people, documents and repositories and science of
Knowledge maps are then super imposed on the implicit knowledge captured by the Social classification of terms
Network and Virtual Communities created. Using a combination of Taxonomies, Ontology’s related to a particular
and tagging schemes a knowledge map for the community is created. community
Ontology’s are formal representation of knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the
relationships between those concepts. It is used to describe the different entities within that domain,
and may be used to describe the domain.
www.infoaxon.com

6. White paper
The Business Need
“Every organization generates vast amounts of information while conducting business; yet few organizations are
able to leverage it all to generate new opportunities or capitalize on collective knowledge assets.”
Millions of documents, emails, memos, charts, and Web pages, not to mention the tacit Document Management,
information that employees possess, remain undiscovered and their potential untapped. Collaboration, Social
Organizations that let such valuable information languish are in danger of missing competitive Networking and other
opportunities or even losing the information forever. disciplines all come
together to form a
Employees duplicate existing work because they are not aware of prior efforts by others or comprehensive enterprise
concurrent projects with overlapping goals. New employees often don’t know where to look knowledge management
for information or who to turn to for answers. Customers make decisions to buy elsewhere. strategy. The base of such
Partners miss strategic opportunities. a knowledge management
strategy is built on search
In spite of this, all organizations evolve a way of managing knowledge. It is and tagging technology
happening around us in a crude ad hoc manner. During day-to-day life activities, which offers employees
employees interact with each other in any or some form of networking and the ability to quickly and
easily find existing useful
produce knowledge. This interaction generates knowledge in several structure
content in context and be
and format. notified of any new
content as it is generated.
Good Knowledge management practices, tools and technologies help to link people looking for In addition, search for the
knowledge with those who have it. It focuses on capturing this information, whether it is knowledge assets
explicitly held in a document or database or exists tacitly in the forms of knowledge and scattered over the
experience in the minds of employees. This tacit information is exceedingly hard to preserve. internet.
Industry analysts estimate that without knowledge management practices in place more than
80 percent of the information that employees, customers and partners have is lost to the
organization.
www.infoaxon.com

7. White paper
Challenges in responding to Business Need
Information Technology has responded to this business challenge by providing point products that solve a few needs around
document management, content management and search.
Some of these products attempt to merge with collaborative and social technologies to create a new way of Knowledge
Management that is based on bottom to top approach and highly granualar in nature. The trends also show that
Knowledge Management technologies and Collaboration Technologies need to come together since there is a significant increase in
both these areas.
The technology landscape in use to aid knowledge management within organizations to create a knowledge sharing environment
includes use of a whole gamut of technologies supported by proprietary and open source products.
However there have been numerous challenges in deployment or use of these technologies. Implementing Knowledge Management
or sharing does not convince a budget holder clearly of Return on Investment(ROI). This is primarly also because knowledge
management is:
 A long term investment where benefits are very real and important to business but very hard to quantify.
 Is not available today fully in any proprietary or open source product and requires a new way of thinking that is evolutionary but
in the right direction
 Vendor lock in of any solution adopted makes it difficult to manage the technology adoption at a pace that the organization can
handle.
www.infoaxon.com

8. White paper
The use of these technologies above show that while collaboration technologies have started penetrating the entperise in a big way
there are several other knowledge management applications such as document management, digital asset management, records
management, knowledge repositories that are only slowly taking ground.
www.infoaxon.com

9. White paper
Most requirements for a knowledge management environment within a business is entwined with workflow, business process
context and require greater degree of integration with communication technologies.
Open Source, Open Data, Open Interfaces – The way to go
Open source provides a wide variety of options with different enabling technologies and systems required for knowledge
management. Some of these technologies are mature while others are evolving within the open source communities. The list
below provides an overview of how far open source has penetrated with a volley of options available (Note: Only the most viable of
the open source options are mentioned here, however the total list of open source options runs into several scores in each
category):
• Wordpress, • Alfresco, • Elgg, Social
Drupal, Knowledge Engine,
OpenCMS, Tree Liferay
Liferay
Web Based Document
Content Management & Social Network
Management ECM
Flexibility (and Pitfalls) of Choice
Taking an open source route is also a double edged sword. We have the benefit of tremendous flexibility of choice and yet at the
same time there are too many choices and one can easily get lost.
Open source technologies with open standards and open interfaces provide an excellent set of tools in several collaboration and
knowledge management categories shown in the diagram above. Ultimately these tools represent flexibility of choice.
However adoption of these tools is confusing for most users because of the specific need that these tools address at any one time.
This leads to key questions in the mind of anyone interested in adoption of Open Source as a strategy for knowledge management.
www.infoaxon.com

10. White paper
• What tools to pick? Which open source tool for which KM
requirement?
• What can and can not be achieved through the commonly available
Feasibility open source tools?
• Is the open source technology really open and robust? How do we
ensure this and go with a
Technology • Does it support open data and open interfaces?
• Are there legal implications of using too much of open source?
• How will the licensing impact our business if we make modification to
Legal the source code or write more applications?
Reality is that putting knowledge management in place is a combination of multiple technologies such as ECM, Document
Management, Web Based Content Management, Search and now Social Networks.
Most of the open source options today have evolved around a set of use cases of Knowledge management such as Search, Web
content publishing, Ability to search and manage documents. Most organizations do not have resources to implement a
comprehensive Knowledge Management initiatives using just one of the open source software.
www.infoaxon.com

11. White paper
Open Source “Platforming”
Open Source Platforming is an innovative business approach to implementing open source and can be applied effectively to
Knowledge Management.
Using best of breed open source options that solve one problem well, multiple challenges around Knowledge Management can be
solved. Organizations such as InfoAxon use this approach to develop integrated platforms that bring together a potent mix of
Dynamic Knowledge Repositories, Enterprise Search, Web Content Management and Enterprise Portals laced with Social Network
Contexts.
Social Open Source Platforming
Network
Contexts approach focuses on
creating white label well
architected Open source
technology platforms.
Knowledge Enteprise
Using the best that open
Federated
Search Management Content
Management
source has to offer these
platforms bring together
Environment different knowledge
sharing disciplines
delivered with a social
networking context that is
Dynamic business friendly.
Knowledge
Repositories
Platform not a Product
It is important to note that the focus of Open Source Platforming approach is to have a White Label business integration ready
solution that can take upon several forms as required by the particular flavor of knowledge management required. The platform
therefore helps organizations interested in adopting open source in the right manner.
www.infoaxon.com

12. White paper
The Platforming Roadmap
Dynamic
Knowledge
Repositories store
content agnostic to
the content type
and are breathing,
evolving changing
repository of
content. At the
time of setup the
content models for
the business are
created.
Knowledge is
created through
social and
collaborative
spaces entwined
with business
process workflows
Most organizations today have either gone or will go through the above stages of
knowledge management roadmap or more likely moving through the following stages: Deeper insights
into knowledge are
Setting up of Dynamic delivered through
semantic search
Knowledge Repositories
and context based
tagging with an
Collaborative Knowledge ever evolving set of
Sharing Environment semantic
applications
Knowledge Management
around Business Processes
Knowledge Management with
deep meaningful insights
www.infoaxon.com

13. White paper
Put Knowledge Management at Your own pace through “Platforming”
Build Insights
Get Social around
Business Processes
Usher Collaboration
Activate Content
Repositories
Level 1 – Implement Dynamic Knowledge Repositories, Expose Content
as a Service
Dynamic knowledge repositories help set up an open standard content repository within an organization.
Using open source technologies such as Alfresco and Apache Jackrabbit it is possible to create interoperable and platform
independent knowledge repositories that expose content to any external application. Using this approach it is possible to expose
content as a service.
www.infoaxon.com

14. White paper
Level 2 – Collaborative Enterprise Social Network backed by
Knowledge Repositories
At this stage, social networking experience is implemented on top of an existing or newly established dynamic knowledge
repository. This approach helps developed Project and Service “Knowledge Spaces” and weave these spaces within the social
network experience. The result is a well connected collaborative social environment within the enterprise.
The dynamic knowledge repository is tuned at the stage further to integrate with the overall social network experience of the users.
This leads to instant connections that are identified by the individuals and employees automatically thus creating an enterprise
social network backed by knowledge repositories.
Level 3 – Process based Knowledge Sharing
Process based Knowledge Management and sharing combines contents with automatic business contexts using the tasks performed
by the Users.
Open source technologies such as jBPM, JBOSS and Alfresco provide a configurable workflow engine well integrated and used
within the platform approach. User works in a normal project process within the knowledge spaces and creates content during
various tasks.
Information is automatically associated with several contextual information to whatever contents produced by the user, and
presents these perspective information along with the content as required.
www.infoaxon.com

15. White paper
Level 4 – Enhancing Knowledge Management using Semantic Web
Semantic Web (also called Web 3.0) helps us understand the “meaning” behind the information stored in knowledge repositories.
Semantic Web uses open data integration formats such as RDF (Resource Description Framework), XML, and Web Ontology to
describe the concepts, terms and definitions of a particular business domain.
Content stored in knowledge repositories is published along with Semantic HTML data as it is
extracted from the knowledge repository.
Semantic Web technologies provide several tools for knowledge capture, processing and sharing of content related to a domain.
Fine Grained Intelligent Semantic Search
The content can be searching using Semantic technologies and reduce the ambiguity against full text based searches commonly
provided by the search engines. The search results can also be contextualized to a higher degree using the semantic metadata and
provide content much more sharply and based on interests of the user.
Visualization of Social Network and Knowledge Repository
Open source Semantic technologies also help provide a better visualization of the knowledge repository and also of the underlying
relationships behind the search results. For e.g. if a Knowledge worker searches through a listing then using cross references and
annotations it should be possible to provide representative views of the search results.
www.infoaxon.com

16. White paper
Open Source Platform for Knowledge
Management
fusionKM is a Knowledge Management platform – using the platform organizations can quickly establish internal KM solution
and develop their internal business process and taxonomy. It allows organizations to create departments, networks, projects,
groups and enables users to work in a collaborative environment.
The platform is offered as an in-premise SaaS model. The whole stack is maintained and managed by InfoAxon.
Social Network Solutions in today’s days create Networks, enables users to collaborate in a highly interactive fashion; but rarely
they are useful in terms of Knowledge Management aspects. In other words, today’s social network platforms do not cater to a
major business problem – Knowledge Management. fusionKM enables organizations to establish a number of networks and groups
within and thus enabling all the knowledge sharing and management aspects.
fusionKM allows users to conduct single point and comprehensive search not only from the in-premise knowledge bank but also
from the wide spread internet sources. Automatic and intelligent search engine enables users to find the desired information quickly
and efficiently. The rich knowledge repository of fusionKM constitutes of Wikis, Blogs, Documents, Discussion Forums, EMails,
Media files etc.
The Knowledge Network
Like a social networking platform, in fusionKM, people can make friends, join any groups or communities – thus creating their
individual network. fusionKM introduces Knowledge Network which is, for a person, the whole knowledge base of his/her social
network. Now a person’s knowledge is not limited to him profile only; but his whole social networks constitute his knowledge base.
fusionKM enables organizations to create groups, departments, locations, projects – and users contribute in these thus creating
knowledge contents. Users can be friends to each other thus expanding their knowledge network.
Organization’s knowledge thus keeps on building in a single repository on a highly collaborative and web 2.0 enterprise portal
framework.
Solution Highlights
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
The solution is designed and architected in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA),
making it fully extensible and integrated with organizations internal and legacy
systems.
Repository as Service
The full knowledge repository can be exposed as REST based HTTP services,
making the solution ready to serve as knowledge provider to other systems.
www.infoaxon.com

17. White paper
The Technology
1. Liferay® Portal
2. Alfresco® ECMS
Business Process
3. Open Office
The integrated business process engine can be configured to implement any workflow 4. JBPM
processes of any industry or organization. It has integrated modules for Reporting, Timesheet, 5. JQuery, YUI
Project Management, Task Management, Escalation etc. 6. Lucene
7. MySQL
Portal
8. Apache Tomcat
Full featured JSR complaint portal framework with lots of built in applications such as Wiki,
Blog, Discussion Forum, Calendar, Theme, Web CMS, Document Management, Private Features
Messaging etc. 1. Friends
2. Communities/Groups
CMIS 3. Sub-
Organizations/Locatio
CMIS complaint platform enabling interoperability between other Enterprise Content ns
Management Systems. 4. Integrated Search
engine
Protocols
5. Graphical
A number of industry standard protocols such as WebDAV, IMAP, CIFS, FTP etc are supported Representation of
in fusionKM making the platform pluggable to other complaint systems. Knowledge/Network
6. Contextualized
Intranet ready Search
fusionKM is a fitting solution for organization wide Intranet setups with multiple branches, 7. Tagging/Tag Cloud
departments and geographically distributed. 8. Public, Private
contents
Mesh Ups 9. Portal Framework
fusionKM has built in applications to integrate with several other popular information and
10. Wikis, Blogs
knowledge sources; such as Bing, Youtube, Flickr, Delicious, Wikipedia etc. 11. Discussion Threads
12. Dynamic Document
Open Platform Metadata
13. Document Check-
No limit in number of users and knowledge content size and space. In/Check-Out,
versioning
14. Document
Transformation, PDF
generation
15. Image Processing,
Transformation
16. Automatic/Custom
Workflows
17. Private Messaging
ffff
www.infoaxon.com

18. White paper
18. Bookmarking
19. Image Gallery
Benefits 20. Related Documents
21. Tree-style Folder
For Users
structure for
 Reduces time required to complete knowledge intensive work documents
 Increases “trust level” in information accuracy and timeliness 22. Granular and
 Eases burden on subject “experts” since users can get answers and guidance to their Customizable
questions on a self-serve basis Permissioning model
23. Notifications
For Administrators
24. Calendars, Events
 Minimal resources required for ongoing maintenance as many tasks can be scheduled for 25. Search by Synonyms
automatic rule based execution 26. Dynamic Portal
 Security inherited from content source, so administrators do not have to worry about Themes
unauthorized users gaining access to sensitive information 27. Separate Themes and
 Comprehensive toolkit for building, supervising and managing the Enterprise Portal Navigations for
groups, locations,
For Organizations communities
28. Powerful Web CMS
 Improves ROI of knowledge asset management by reusing information instead of
for Portal pages
reinventing and searching for it
29. Public, Private,
 Reduces cost of retaining intellectual capital and transmitting it to new employees or
Restricted groups
successors
30. Saved Searches
 Quick and Easy installation and use across the enterprise
31. Custom Taxonomies
 All resources and knowledge under a single umbrella
32. User Folksonomy
 Flexible licensing and pricing model
33. JSR Portal
 Based on full Open Source – Full ownership, no vendor lock-in
framework, Portlets
 Full featured Corporate Intranet platform
34. Full Text Search
35. CIFS document
access for Intranet
setups
36. Templates
37. Dedicated, private
space for users
www.infoaxon.com

19. About InfoAxon Technologies
InfoAxon is a leading provider of enterprise services and business
solutions powered by open source. We design, architect and support
complete “Enterprise Solution Platforms” using Open Standards, Web 2.0
next generation technologies and Open Source Frameworks providing
end-to-end solutions to business problems.
India’s First Global Open Source Integration Company
We are India's First Global Open Source Integration Company providing
business solutions in areas of Content & Knowledge Management,
Web2.0 Collaboration and Business Intelligence powered by our
unique open source ‘Platforming’ expertise.
INDIA OFFICE: UK OFFICE:
InfoAxon Technologies Ltd. InfoAxon Technologies UK Ltd.
H-189, Sector-63, Building A, Trinity Court,
Electronic City, Wokingham Road,
NODIA-201307, U.P Bracknell, Berkshire RG42 1PL,
India United Kingdom
Phone:+91 120 4350040, Phone: +44 1344 668048,
Fax:+ 91 120 4350065 Fax: +44 1344 668148
Website: www.infoaxon.com | Blog: http://blog.infoaxon.com | E-mail: contactus@infoaxon.com