Knowledge Management Systems: Three Core Components
This paper examines the three core components of knowledge management systems — communication, collaboration, and storage/retrieval — and analyzes how disruptive innovations in information technology have transformed each component from the late 1990s to the present. The analysis contrasts the heavily siloed, client/server-era systems of the late 1990s, which were slow, costly, and limited to structured data, with today's web-service-driven, socially influenced, and virtualization-enabled platforms. The paper draws on key literature in knowledge management and information technology to illustrate the scope of these changes and their implications for enterprise productivity and performance.
- Introduction: Defines scope: three KMS components and disruptive change
- Knowledge Management Systems in the Late 1990s: Describes slow, siloed, structured KMS of the 1990s
- Disruptive Innovations and Their Impact on Each Component: Traces how Internet, social tools, and virtualization transformed KMS
- Conclusion: Summarizes storage transformation and cloud computing emergence
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Uses a clear chronological contrast — late 1990s versus today — to organize the analysis around observable, concrete change rather than abstract claims.
- Applies a consistent three-part framework (communication, collaboration, storage/retrieval) across both time periods, giving the argument a tight parallel structure that is easy to follow.
- Grounds claims in cited academic and textbook sources, lending credibility to what could otherwise read as unsupported technological commentary.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative historical analysis applied to an IT topic: it establishes a baseline condition (late 1990s client/server infrastructure), identifies key disruptive forces (Internet advances, analytics, social networking, virtualization), and then traces the effect of those forces on each system component. This technique is effective for short analytical essays because it provides natural before-and-after structure without requiring primary data.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief framing introduction that defines scope and intent. A single extended analytical section then covers both time periods across all three components, moving from communication to collaboration to storage/retrieval. The argument builds cumulatively, with each component receiving roughly equal treatment. The paper closes without a separate conclusion section, relying instead on the final paragraph's synthesis of storage/retrieval trends to signal resolution. For a short essay, this compact structure is appropriate.
Introduction
The many disruptive innovations that are continually changing the nature of enterprise software are having a significant impact on each component of knowledge management systems. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate the three core components of knowledge management systems: communication, collaboration, and storage/retrieval. The rapid evolution of these systems between the late 1990s and today illustrates just how disruptive the innovations discussed here are from an information technologies (IT) perspective.
Knowledge Management Systems in the Late 1990s
During the late 1990s, the predominant IT infrastructure was client/server based. Knowledge management systems were often highly balkanized and isolated in terms of integration, which made them difficult to use for strategic-level tasks (Edwards, Shaw, & Collier, 2005). Communication, collaboration, and storage/retrieval tasks were typically batch-oriented, slow, and required significant IT reprogramming simply to function together. The use of IT to streamline the communication component of knowledge management systems was also disjointed and captured only tacit, not implicit, knowledge. There was also a strong focus on making all knowledge as structured and easily indexed as possible, owing to the highly static data structures of the time (Turban & Volonino, 2010).
Collaboration components of these systems were likewise designed for highly structured, easily defined workflows that allowed little variation in process design. It could take months to modify a given communication workflow through IT programming tools and techniques. Finally, the storage/retrieval component of knowledge management systems from that era was exponentially slower than it is today, far more difficult to index and update, and the most costly part of the system from both a pricing and total cost of ownership standpoint. All of these factors made knowledge management systems far more adept at managing structured queries, and nowhere near as agile or quickly modifiable as they are today (Edwards, Shaw, & Collier, 2005).
Contrasting the late 1990s with today illustrates how disruptive the Internet, advances in analytics and constraint-based engines, and the ability to capture and use tacit knowledge have all been on these three components of knowledge management systems (Edwards, Shaw, & Collier, 2005). Beginning with communications functionality and modules, this has become more of a Web Service today, uniting the many diverse areas of a knowledge management system in the process (Edwards, Shaw, & Collier, 2005). Communications now serve as the backbone of many knowledge management systems as a result.
Conclusion
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.