Knowledge management repositories and services

An increasing number of knowledge models are created in companies and organizations. These are Enterprise Architecture models, business process models, organization models, software design models (e.g. UML) and more. Various users require customized views on the knowledge models, suited to their needs and contexts. A growing number of users need simple access to the knowledge models, and the versioning and configuration control, access control and life cycle management of these models has become vital for customer value and acceptance. This paper discusses services and architecture of knowledge management repository systems, and the state- of-the-art Metis Team Server system is used as an example. The potential of the services exposed is exemplified with EXTERNAL (IST-1999-10091), where various end-user tools from different vendors all collaborate using the same repository. Finally, lessons learned and the future direction of knowledge management repository systems is discussed. We propose a solution with flexible, scalable and secure architecture that provides ways of automating knowledge management in the form of work processes. The solution supports the entire life cycle of large-scale enterprise knowledge management.