Research and report at the same time?

Making Inter/intranet searches easier is Autonomy's goal with a new software release.

Autonomy's ActiveKnowledge analyzes what a worker is writing, and provides real-time links to relevant internal and external information, including news articles, Web sites, Lotus Notes files, E-mails, Word documents or contact information for other workers researching a similar topic.

Workers normally spend lots of time and energy compiling research, treating it as a separate step before writing reports. Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch says ActiveKnowledge "does the work for them."

ActiveKnowledge will be incorporated into Autonomy's Knowledge Management Suite Version 2.0, scheduled for release later this spring. Pricing for the system, which runs on Windows NT and most Unix flavors, will be approximately $25,000 for the server software with a variable seat price of $50 to $250.

Making knowledge management a part of workers' day-to-day business functions (e.g. writing presentations, reports or Email messages) is the next step in true knowledge management, according to Delphi Group analyst Carl Frappaolo.

"By positioning ActiveKnowledge as an integral part of the business process, user resistance is limited and utilization should be significantly and positively impacted," he said