KM Technology Assessment“Knowledge and team collaboration servers”DSC8030/CIS8260Dr. SamaddarSummer 2004

Jon A. Preston

Agenda Motivation/Need Importance of collaboration servers Leading Products

IBM/Lotus Discovery Server Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Comparison & Contrast Deployment Considerations Conclusions

Motivation/Need Formalize knowledge markets Discover patterns of knowledge Identify covert experts Capture knowledge formally

Best practices Technical reports Status of documents/projects

Collaborative Servers Bring people together

KRD type information Act as electronic librarians

Search for expertise, papers, etc. Manage projects Provide “total view” of company

Avoid blindness Selective blindness

IndustriesBusiness practices and processes that focus on information access, knowledge sharing, business application availability, and collaboration between remote users are the best candidates to be implemented within a portal framework across business domains that include financial services, manufacturing, and telecommunications companies.

- Cognizant Technology Solutions (2002)

Enterprise Portal Market

Leading Products IBM/Lotus Discovery Server

1550 worldwide installations (2002)

Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003

IBM/Lotus Discovery Server Search Expertise Location Capture “relevant experiences”

Extracts, analyzes, & categorizes “Reveals” relationships Automatically generates and maintains K-maps Generates & maintains user profiles – “uncovers”

knowledge

Searching

Knowledge Broker Provides affinities Provides contact

information Denotes

availability Off-line On-line Do not disturb

Performance Improvements in 2.0.1

Concurrent users

Documents in system

Total searches per hour

Average response time (sec)

CPU usage (percent)

HTTP CPU usage (percent)

250 300,000 5,000 2.6 47 29

Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server “Connects users, teams, and knowledge” Enterprise solution Single log-on (point of access) Customization & personalization of portal

Organizational role Team membership Interest Security

Locate documents, processes, and best practices Integrates into existing applications

Searching Files Web servers Microsoft Exchange Server folders Lotus Notes

Automatic/push notification on additions and changes

Document Management Versioning Approval workflow Check-in and check-out Status tracking/profiling

Customized Information

Searching

Document/Information Sharing

SharePoint PerformanceNumber of users Recommended topology

< 1,000Single server with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE)

< 10,000 Single server with SQL Server 2000

< 25,000 *

Small farm: Front-end Web server (1),

SQL (1+, optionally clustered)

< 100,000

Medium farm: Front-end Web server or search (2),

index or job (1), SQL (1+, optionally clustered)

> 100,000Large farm: Front-end Web server (2+), search (2+), index (1+), SQL (1+, optionally clustered)

Single ServerServer type RAM Hard disk CPU

Web, index, search, and database

1 gigabyte (GB) 100 GB Dual 2.8 GHz Pentium 4

A system built with the hardware described in the preceding table should have the following performance characteristics:

Process 15 requests per second (Peak common action) (including 2 searches per second) with MSDE

Note   MSDE has a database size limit of 2 GB and a limit of 5 concurrent jobs.

Process 32 requests per second (including 4 searches per second) with SQL Server

Index 5 documents per second

Store up to 100,000 documents (using SQL Server)

Index up to 1 million documents (using SQL Server)

Host up to 10,000 team and personal sites

Host up to 5 portal sites (using shared services)

Large Server FarmServer type RAM Hard disk Number of computers

Web servers 2 GB 100 GB 2

Search servers 2 GB 200 GB 2

Database server 2 GB 200 GB 1

Index management server

2 GB 100 GB 1

A system built with the hardware described in the preceding table should have the following performance characteristics:

Process 100 requests per second (Peak common action) including 15 searches per second

Index 10 documents per second (up to 625-1105 of various types if scaled)

Store up to 1 million documents

Index up to 5 million documents

Host 50,000+ SharePoint sites and personal sites

Comparison/Contrast Both offer

Searching Document sharing/managing Contact information

Discovery Server Discovers knowledge, relationships K-maps

SharePoint More customized view (portal: calendar, news, etc.)

Deployment Considerations Consider existing IT infrastructure

Lotus Notes → Discovery Server Microsoft Office/Exchange → SharePoint

Integration to other systems possible, but potentially problematic Upgrades could break links

Leverage existing interfaces K-map rules/relations may require

“oversight”

Conclusions Online collaborative tools vital

Sharing documents Version control, profiling

Personnel directory/searching Provides views of company Access to experts

Tool selection dependant upon current technologies in place Document/user size may be a consideration

References IBM Lotus Software - Discovery Server Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office/sps2003/plan/cappisps.mspx

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