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What's Beyond Groupware?

IBM groupthink guru Mike Zisman looks toward instant messaging and knowledge management.

By Marc Songini, NetworkWorld   

Mike Zisman has two jobs--he's executive vice president for strategy at Lotus Development and vice president of strategy for parent company IBM. Currently he's spending much of his time exploring the topics of knowledge management and collaborative communications. Zisman recently shared his thoughts on these and other issues with Network World Senior Writer Marc Songini.

Q: The traditional messaging and groupware markets seem to have matured. What's going to spice up this market?

A: The market is moving in more interesting directions with real-time collaboration and knowledge management. We've clearly solved the messaging problem--you can't live without messaging today. Now we're solving problems in the collaborative market and doing real-time messaging, and from that we get knowledge management.

Q: What do you mean when you talk about knowledge management?

A: The best sound bite is from [former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer] Lew Platt, who said, "HP would be better off if HP knew what HP knew." Knowledge management is a whole set of technologies. There are five key ones: business intelligence; collaboration; distributed learning; knowledge discovery and mapping; and expertise location.

Technology plays a role in knowledge management but by itself it will not solve problems.... Knowledge management requires the recognition that unless companies change their core processes, just throwing technologies at problems will not change things.

Q: How does your view of knowledge management differ from, say, Microsoft's?

A: I'm not sure Microsoft appreciates this. I chuckled when I saw an ad in the Wall Street Journal for knowledge management. There was a picture of Windows and BackOffice. You can call it knowledge management if you want, guys, but it's the same old stuff.

Q: Where is the real-time collaboration market going?

A: The market for pure messaging peaked, and now most customers want to see messaging-based collaboration.... These collaboration products are doing quite well. I can instant message anyone in my company. With a browser, you can go to a Web site and click on to a meeting and all be working together. It eliminates an enormous amount of travel. The next big step is directly embedding collaboration tools in applications. We're very excited about integrating this into applications in other IBM units.

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