"Tahoe" Document Management Server in Beta

Microsoft’s new document management server, code-named Tahoe and released in public beta in November, provides powerful document management and search and retrieval functions currently delivered in much more expensive and specialized software packages. Because it uses Web standards, Tahoe allows organizations to build intranet portals that let users access knowledge more effectively. Until recently, Microsoft applications were designed to help individuals create and manage their own documents; collaboration on Office documents was done mainly by saving them to file servers where others could access them. Tahoe aims to make publishing and retrieval of knowledge much easier and more flexible than ever before, providing organizations with much more value than additional Office bells and whistles. This article gives readers a first look at how Tahoe addresses knowledge management needs.

The Challenges of Knowledge Management

Organizations have historically struggled with getting accumulated knowledge into the hands of workers who need it. Even when someone captures important organizational knowledge in a document, letting others know of its existence and making it easily available to them is no simple task. In the paper-based world, organizations have had librarians, clerks, and assistants filing, categorizing, and cataloguing information. Without this costly and labor-intensive step, paper records were nearly useless. With the advent of personal computers and networks, document authors have largely taken over the filing role, storing their documents in a folder hierarchy on network servers. This practice raises four problems: