Benefits of Cloud Computing in Knowledge Management - Research Proposal Example

? Benefits of Cloud Computing in Knowledge Management Introduction Knowledge management can be defined as a set of tools, practises and strategies that are used in an organisation to collect, identify, create and distribute information to enable the organisation to embrace insights and experiences inform of knowledge that an individual has or that is contained in the organisation inform of processes and practises. This knowledge in an organisation can be divided into tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge is defined as the type of information that is inherent in an individual and he is not aware that he posses it, such information include how an individual performs responsibilities that are assigned to him. Explicit knowledge is the type of information that an individual has and he is more conscious of, and he can communicate the same with other people, this kind of knowledge is the one that organisations focus on capitalising on. Cloud computing is a term that is used to refer a large interconnection of computers that share data, this means that instead of using the local servers or personal devices to handle applications, organisations rely on sharing of computing resources through the use of internet. The interlink between knowledge management and cloud computing in an organisation comes in several ways where an organisation will use the cloud computing resources in knowledge management. Cloud storage, which has a vast of storage space in comparison to the typical storage spaces such as the hard disks, is a key driver of knowledge management tools such as blogging, micro-blogging pages, wiki, individual web spaces, podcasts, webcasts that require large volumes of storage space. The flexibility that cloud computing offers in terms of the dedicating space when it is needed is convenient for knowledge management activities such as teleconferencing, web calls and lead capture, the ease of access of information that has been stored in the cloud computers by multiple users facilitates fast approval of information which has allowed workflow to be more efficient. Knowledge management has been ineffective for a long time due to several reasons; one of the reasons is that knowledge management has been confined to the walls of the organisation for a long time. This is despite the common knowledge that most of the useful information to the employees of a company is present outside these walls, which would improve the innovativeness and efficiency of the employees. With the discovery and growth of internet, most of the organisations that used intranet in knowledge management from actively managing the productivity of critical knowledge assets have made it become a publisher of informational assets. With the introduction of cloud computing in knowledge management, every individual either within or out of an organisation will become a knowledge manager. as tools become easier to use, individuals will actively contribute to the relevance of the information that is available within an organisation, in addition to this, individuals will be able to contribute to the improvement of the of practises and improvement of decision making. It will as be possible to send the information available within an organisation outside and also monetize it for the benefit of the organisation, however this will require companies to change their policies that govern how knowledge is shared within an organisation and new ways on how to gain a competitive edge using knowledge. While knowledge management has been a priority to most of the organisations for many years, addressing the challenge that comes with it has been relatively hard for most of the organisations (Kambil, 2009, p67). With the current increasing economic uncertainties, reducing loyalties among customers, a very diversified workforce and increasing competition have made companies to find new and innovative ways to advance their knowledge management standards to match these challenges. These problems have been made worse by most of the organisations' inability to achieve meaningful progress in integrating business intelligence and analytical tools in their daily activities. Efforts in the past to address the problems that faced knowledge management were hindered by technological, financial and organisational difficulties. The technological challenges that faced the organisations in knowledge management included the fact that the old way of knowledge management that was based within the premises was very complex and complicated to use and was very inflexible in meeting the knowledge needs within an organisation. The implication of technological difficulties was that it led to increase in design, planning, implementation and operational costs that were a challenge for organisations to meet and therefore most of the knowledge management projects in an organisation that could not afford the financial implications were abandoned. Traditionally, workers within an organisation were not willing to share important information that they thought was their security to their job either because they considered sharing this information would lender their services in an organisation useless therefore be fired or the time that it would take for them to include this information into the company’s database would be prohibitively long. The increase of online services in business has led to sharing of information and knowledge beyond what companies would have imagined in the past, as a result of this, many organisations have now had to deal with this reality and how they can integrate this valuable information in the running of the organisations. In addition, the companies have to deal with the problem of making the appropriate and relevance policies to ensure that the information that they generate to the external environment they are compensated for and to follow the guidelines that have been set in their industries. Cloud computing can solve this problems by eliminating some if not all of the problems that have challenged knowledge management, one of the way is that it has minimised the systems requirements in cloud computing, secondly cloud computing offers more scalable and secure solutions to the organisations depending on an organisations needs, these solutions are packaged in an elastic manner where they can be expanded depending on the demand in an organisation and are relatively cheap compared to the old ways of knowledge management. In addition, knowledge management currently has become an embedded feature in enterprise entities therefore knowledge management is shifting from becoming a separate entity by itself and instead becoming a feature within enterprise applications. An example is the salesforce.com chatter capability that applies facebook motif to enterprise applications, thereby using a familiar user interface and functionality and embedding it in to a corporate system therefore creating a tool that users enjoy using in their day-to-day operations while the management collects information to use in making decisions that are more informed. Despite some of the challenges that face the practicability of cloud computing, such as data migration and integration it will still be much useful and better placed to ease the process of knowledge management as compared to the traditional methods of knowledge management. Cloud computing has brought insurmountable benefits to the field of knowledge manage with issues such as server outages, which before would affect the operations in an organisation being a thing of the past now since data is retrieval is now not based on the servers. In addition, due the dynamic nature of organisational operations that requires employees to be always on the move, it is necessary that these employees can be able to access databases belonging to their company and cloud computing has brought this benefit to them therefore making their work easier. For knowledge management to evolve in the future of cloud computing, managers of knowledge management in an organisation should try to look outside to other sources of knowledge in addition to external applicability of the knowledge that is present within the confines of an organisation. Managers should be ready to be innovative, experiment with tools like social media and co-creation, and combine them with the old search and database facilities. This paper will conduct a study on the benefits that cloud computing has brought in knowledge management practises, this will entail looking at the extent of application of cloud computing in knowledge management currently and the special features in cloud computing that have made realisation of these benefits possible. Aim of the research The aim of this research will be to examine how the advancement of cloud computing technology has improved knowledge management practices in an organisation, in specific the research will be more interested in determining the benefits that cloud computing has brought to the knowledge management practises in organisational environment. The research will go ahead and analyse several of the features that have been developed in cloud computing that are directly beneficial to the process of knowledge management and which organisations can adopt easily due to the user friendly interface. The history of knowledge management and how organisations have been handling knowledge within their premises before adoption of the cloud computing technology will also be discussed paying close attention to the challenges that these methods of data management brought with them and how cloud computing solved these challenges. The research will also draw insight from the findings and give forward some recommendations that organisations wishing to embrace cloud computing in their operations can put into practise in order for them to reap maximum benefits from the technology. The method Due to the type of information required in this study, which will be both qualitative and quantitative, questionnaires will be used. In the organisations that have not yet integrated cloud computing into their systems, the questionnaires will have questions that wish to find the challenges that the organisations face in knowledge management and the perceived benefits they expect when they embrace cloud computing. In addition, the questionnaire will also gather information on the challenges that these organisations faced if they had contemplated integrating cloud computing in to their knowledge management. Questionnaires will also be administered to the organisations that have successfully implemented cloud computing into their knowledge management practise to determine how it has benefited them in responding to the challenges that they faced prior to them embracing the technology. In addition, the questionnaires will seek to find the challenges that they face in using the technology currently and how they think those challenges can be addressed. Quantitative data will be collected from the bureau of statistics to determine the levels of awareness of the benefits that come with integrating cloud computing into the knowledge management system, in addition, information on the usage rates of the cloud computing in knowledge management across different organisations in different industries will be sought. Research Questions 1. What are the benefits that cloud computing has brought to the practise of knowledge management? 2. What are some of the features of cloud computing that organisations have benefited from and how have they been used to solve the problems faced in knowledge management prior to embracing cloud computing? The schedule Looking for the appropriate books and journals to write the literature review will take a day on 2nd august Writing the literature review will take about four days from 3rd august to 7th august Writing the methodology of the research will take about a week from 9th august to 16th august. Preparation of questionnaire will take another week from 17th august to 24th of august Approval of the proposal by the supervisor of the research will take at most 2 weeks from august 25th to September 10th Questionnaires will be administered to both the organisations that have cloud computing and those that have not embraced it from 12th September to 30th Collection of quantitative data will take place from 2nd October to 10th October Analysis of the data will take one week from 11th October to 18th October Conclusions and recommendations will take approximately one day to complete on 19th October, inserting of appendices, binding of the project will be on 20th October and the research will be ready for presentation on 21st October Future plan The future plan for this project will be to conduct a survey that will analyse the positive impact that the integration of cloud computing has on the practise of knowledge management in organisations in addition to studying how the practise of knowledge management has evolved with changes in cloud computing and ways in which organisations will adapt to these changes. 5 related topics 1. The practise of knowledge management in the period of cloud computing 2. The economic implications of integrating cloud computing in knowledge management. 3. Managing advances in cloud computing in a company’s knowledge management 4. Effective application of cloud storage in information management 5. The place of cloud computing in knowledge management References Kambil, A. 2009, "Obliterate knowledge management: everyone is a knowledge manager!", The Journal of business strategy, 30(6), p. 66-68. Read More